TOURING TUDOR ENGLAND—WITH PROFESSOR EVA TAYLOR AND GOOGLE MAPS PART 1
LET’S OPEN WITH a timeline: Around 1540, King Henry VIII commanded Library Keeper and Antiquary John Leland to ride horseback throughout the realm to recover books and manuscripts scattered, stolen, … Continue reading
AN AMERICAN CHILD’S YEAR IN EUROPE
“WHEN I WAS a little girl of six,” author Louise A Wallace has Ruth write in 1914, “father and mother decided to take my brother and me, and spend one … Continue reading
SEEKING HEALTH IN 1897 CALIFORNIA
I BOUGHT MY Two Health-Seekers in Southern California because it was particularly bright for a book published in 1897. Plus, who’s not to like seeking health in Southern California, even … Continue reading
TOURING NORTHERN ITALIAN LAKES WITH GABRIEL FAURE (BUT WITHOUT THE ACUTE ACCENT)
GABRIEL FAURE WAS a French writer. He is not to be confused (at least now that I’ve researched matters…) with Gabriel Fauré a French composer. I was attracted to Gabriel … Continue reading
NORTH KOREA TRIPPIN’
ARMCHAIR TRAVEL CAN be enlightening and entertaining. To wit, Michael Palin’s North Korea Journal. British polymath Palin is a member of the Monty Python comedy group and is also a … Continue reading
ON SPEAKING M.L.E.
REBECCA MEAD WRITES “Schoolchildren in the British capital have developed a dialect, Multicultural London English—and my American-born son is learning it.” This, from The New Yorker, February 6, 2022. It’s … Continue reading
Cartoline da Collezione
TRUE, THE FOLLOWING are “collectible postcards,” but they’re also little pieces of art. Here are tidbits associated with these cartoline and their subjects. Hotel Eden, Rome. Located at Via Ludovisi, … Continue reading
EARLY CALIFORNIA COOKERY
CALIFORNIA’S CULTURAL DIVERSITY has given it a rich variety of cuisines. Helen Walker Linsenmeyer’s From Fingers to Finger Bowls offers tidbits of this from the earliest days to 1900. Linsenmeyer … Continue reading
HOW PARIS AMUSES ITSELF, 1903
HOW COULD I NOT read a book from 1903 with the title How Paris Amuses Itself? The book is one of those available new “selected by scholars as being culturally … Continue reading
LE MANS AND TARASCON, 1907
I BOUGHT THE BOOK A Spring Fortnight in France some years ago because its first chapter is about Le Mans and its last one about Tarascon. I know of Le … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 