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Landscapes, Perceived
[Image: a view of the Preseli Hills in north Pembrokeshire, West Wales. See the note below for more information.] From whiskey river: Landscape and Soul Though we should not speak about the soul, that is, about things we don’t know, I’m sure mine sleeps the day long, waiting to be jolted, even jilted awake, preferably [...]
The Fluttering of Things Going ‘Round (and Sometimes Away, and Sometimes Back)
[Video: La Fée des Grèves, or The Fairy of the Surf, a 1909 silent film by Louis Feuillade, dubbed "film's first fairy tale" by the Film: Ab Initio blog] From whiskey river: A Blessing For Absence May you know that absence is full of tender presence And that nothing is ever lost or forgotten. May [...]
Book Review: Who Hates Whom, by Bob Harris
My latest review is up at The Book Book. This time around, it’s a non-fiction title, Who Hates Whom. (Subtitle: Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts, and Various Things Blowing Up: A Woefully Incomplete Guide.) In brief, it’s a good overview of world “trouble spots” — where they are, how they became troublesome in the first place, [...]
The World Turned Inside-Out
Just saw this on the BBC’s YouTube channel. Sobering, exciting, fascinating… and sobering. The economic progress of 200 countries over the course of 200 years — demonstrated and discussed in a four-minute video: As always with simple presentations of complex issues, especially statistics, there’s such a thing as reading too much into this. Politicians and [...]
What’s in a Song: Simple Gifts (2)
[Above: portion of letter from Aaron Copland to Harold Spivacke, Chief of the Music Division at the Library of Congress. Original in the Library of Congress's Aaron Copland Collection.] [Below, click Play button to begin Appalachian Spring, the seventh section. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left -- a row of little vertical [...]
What’s in a Song: Simple Gifts (1)
The great tangled rope of popular music (American and otherwise) includes so many disparate strands that to speak of it as a single “thing” invites ridicule: show tunes and jazz, bluegrass and ragtime, country, folk, rock, metal, rap, and hip-hop… And then what about “easy listening”? and popular classical music, like Gershwin’s and Copland’s? New [...]
Head Waters
From whiskey river: Have you been to the source of a river? It’s a very mystic place. You get dizzy when you stay for a while. An especially big river has several sources, and the real source, the farthest point which turns to the major stream, is moist and misty, with some kind of ancient [...]
Breaking WIP News: We Have a Title
A couple weeks ago, I posted on the importance of selecting a good title for your work. Here’s what I said then, in part: I’ve struggled for years, off and on, with the title of the WIP. When I tell you I’ve been calling it Grail, I know that instantly summons up certain… certain somethings [...]
Pagan Days
[Image at the right depicts Swedes celebrating Midsummer's Day in a maypole dance. I found this at sweden.se, "The Official Gateway to Sweden."] By tradition, June 24th is Midsummer’s Day. (So you know what that makes the evening of June 23rd, right?) It’s a public holiday in Quebec and a handful of countries in Europe [...]
Drafting a Beer
Every now and then The Missus and I look at each other over a meal or while rambling through cable TV’s Food Network and wonder, Who first thought to do X with this recipe? Okay, reasonably, I know we’re beneficiaries of tens of thousands of years of trial-and-error. Somebody in a grass or furry loincloth [...]
