MY FAVORITE COPLAND
AARON COPLAND is the most American of American classical composers. I celebrate him here with several mini reviews of music I love. Tomorrow, I recommend a most artful book on … Continue reading
VINTAGE PARIS, BERLIN & HOLLYWOOD
WHAT WONDERFUL times they must have been: the vintage years of Paris, Berlin and Hollywood. Following World War I and even into the Great Depression of the 1930s, these three … Continue reading
MINUTES OF KNOWLEDGE
WE’RE USED to sound bites, minutely clear and succinct, satisfying despite their brevity. Curiously, there have also been literary counterparts. And, wouldn’t you know, I have a modest collection of … Continue reading
JUST JOKING AROUND
MARK TWAIN said, “Man is the only animal that laughs, or needs to.” Once our ancestors evolved open-ended thinking, they followed with a hard-wired sense of humor. And if you’d … Continue reading
CELEBRATING SIR PETER USTINOV
TO SAY that actor, writer, dramatist, filmmaker, opera director and stage designer Sir Peter Ustinov was a renaissance man does him a disservice. None of the renaissance men I’ve read … Continue reading
THE BAROQUE CYCLE
EVERY SO often, I encounter a tale that calls for periodic rereading. James Clavell’s two-volume Shōgun is one (www.wp.me/p2ETap-1ln). Neal Stephenson’s trilogy of The Baroque Cycle is another, all 2633 … Continue reading
THERE’S A WORD FOR THAT
ALL LANGUAGES, not only English, are subject to evolution, often by borrowing words or concepts from other languages. A recent article in The New York Times, July 25, 2013, (http://goo.gl/PA8ktc), … Continue reading
ABOUT ENGLAND
A BOOK is a wonderful gift, often because of unexpected things to which it leads. Georgina, a dear English friend, gifted us with a book that, according to its cover … Continue reading
TYPE CASTING
TYPOGRAPHY IS an art form, the design of letters, numerals, punctuation marks and other characters and how they fit together. And to paraphrase an old chestnut, “I don’t know much … Continue reading
WHALE TALES
I DISLIKE multi-tasking but confess what follows is simultaneously a book review, a favored research activity and a technological report. Christopher Moore’s book Fluke is a tale of whimsy, fantasty … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 