THE PEOPLE’S SONG BOOK PART 2
YESTERDAY IN PART 1 we sang in solidarity for picket lines, against dodgers, and most definitely against Hitler. Today, we continue through The People’s Song Book with songs about congressmen … Continue reading
THE PEOPLE’S SONG BOOK, 1948 PART 1
EXAMINING THE PEOPLE’S Song Book, 1948, I’m half expecting an investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee. The book’s Foreward was written by eminent ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, who got caught … Continue reading
THE ROARING—AND SOARING—TWENTIES PART 2
YESTERDAY IN PART 1, Yvonne Brunhammer discussed 1920s’ ballet, travel, and architecture. Today in Part 2, her focus is on a smaller scale: tableware and furniture, two genres of which … Continue reading
THE ROARING—AND SOARING—TWENTIES PART 1
DESIGN OF THE NINETEEN-TWENTIES soared. Artists and artisans, weary of World War I, responded with new perceptions of reality, some of them outright bizarre. Here, in Parts 1 and 2 … Continue reading
DECODING THE HIGHWAY CODE (FROM THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD)
FOR US ’MERICANS, AFTER ALL, it is the wrong side of the road. In any event, the British book You Have Been Warned treats its Highway Code with an anatomically … Continue reading
ARCHITECTURE WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR
ROADSIDE VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE is architecture with a sense of humor, as described in the book California Crazy. Actually, my edition of this book is the original California Crazy, published in … Continue reading
THE TALE OF GENEVIEVE
YOU KNOW IT’S GOING TO BE a charming movie with this opening credit: “For their patient co-operation the makers of this film express their thanks to the officers and members … Continue reading
TOURING TUDOR ENGLAND—WITH PROFESSOR EVA TAYLOR AND GOOGLE MAPS PART 2
WHAT FUN EXPLORING the British Isles with maps dating from 1627! Well, yes, 20th-century Tudor authority Professor Eva G.R. Taylor helps too. And so do 21st-century Google Maps. Here in … Continue reading
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
Simanaitis Says 