AN ENGLISH ECCENTRIC PART 3
WE’VE heard of Noel Pemberton-Billing setting his headmaster’s office ablaze, designing a combined cabin cruiser/aeroplane and other inventive ideas, some successful, others less so. Today in the concluding Part 3, … Continue reading
AN ENGLISH ECCENTRIC PART 1
MY INTEREST IN Noel Pemberton-Billing arose from my GMax/Microsoft Flight Simulator hobby: It was Pemberton-Billing who designed the 1913 P.B.7 flying boat which I modeled. Here, in Parts 1, 2, … Continue reading
QUEEN ELIZABETH II—A MAJESTIC PERSONAGE PART 2
IT’S NOT SURPRISING that Elizabeth Longford’s The Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes includes insights concerning Queen Elizabeth II. Today, in Part 2, we encounter Britain’s first Queen Elizabeth and loyal, … Continue reading
QUEEN ELIZABETH II—A MAJESTIC PERSONAGE PART 1
WHAT WITH her kids, and more recently her grandkids, Queen Elizabeth II has had her share of annis horribilis. More than three decades ago, royal biographer Elizabeth Longford edited The … Continue reading
“MAKING FEDERAL BUILDINGS BEAUTIFUL AGAIN”??
IN 1961, PRESIDENT John F. Kennedy quoted Pericles to the Massachusetts legislature: “We do not imitate—for we are the models of others.” A year later, Daniel Patrick Moynihan cited this … Continue reading
THOUGHTS ON THEATER—1928 PART 2
YESTERDAY, CLARENCE STRATTON shared thoughts on theater, especially of Little Theater as it existed in 1928. Today in Part 2, Stratton describes two theatrical innovations, one with a definite shortcoming. … Continue reading
THOUGHTS ON THEATER—1928 PART 1
IT WAS MAY 26, 1929, when The New York Times reviewed Clarence Stratton’s Theatron with “Our Growing Interest in Little Theatre Groups.” Some 70 years later, I was in a … Continue reading
THE VERY LAST GREEN THING, AN OPERA FOR KIDS—AND FOR OUR TIMES
CARY JOHN FRANKLIN’S opera The Very Last Green Thing has a cast of kids. This is most appropriate: Operas typically concern the past, something that kids (and we) can only … Continue reading
POKÉMON GO VERSUS THE CANADIAN MILITARY
DAUGHTER SUZ is an ardent player of Pokémon GO, the augmented-reality game wherein players chase digital animated creatures all over the world. And when I say “ardent,” I note with … Continue reading
CASES OF MISTAKEN IDENTITIES
LITERATURE—AND LIFE—are replete with mistaken identities. Confusion, chaos, and often hilarity follow, as exemplified in the following three tidbits. Gogol’s Government Inspector.. One of these mistaken identities made an earlier … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 