DIVA DELVES INTO SKULLDUGGERY
HELEN TRAUBEL WAS MORE than a Metropolitan Opera soprano specializing in Wagnerian roles. She was a baseball fan, part owner of her hometown St. Louis Browns. She mixed with the … Continue reading
JENKS ON GRAND PRIX CARS
DENIS JENKINSON, Jenks, was a premiere motor sports journalists from the 1950s until his death at age 75 in 1996. A bearded gnome of a guy, he was larger than … Continue reading
ART—SELF-TAUGHT, SORTA
MY DRAWINGS OF PEOPLE lean toward stick figures; my attempts at perspective tend to be purely orthogonal. However, I have profited from lessons, formal and otherwise, in art appreciation. Here … 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
FUN AT WORK
EONS AGO, IN A summer intern during undergraduate school, my boss advised, “Don’t expect to enjoy your work; that’s why they call it work.” What with teaching at the College … Continue reading
PRACTICING ONE’S FRENCH PRONUNCIATION
“SUFFICE IT TO SAY these curious verses were part of the meagre collections of one François Charles Fernand d’Artin, retired school teacher…” So begins the Foreward of the charming French … Continue reading
A CHAT WITH STIRLING MOSS
IT WAS THE 1993 Copperstate 1000. The event, the third running of this classic car rally through Arizona, was a particularly special one with famed race driver Stirling Moss and … Continue reading
CARUSO AND THE EXTORTIONISTS
IN HER BOOK A Mad Love: An Introduction to Opera, Vivian Schweitzer offers fascinating tidbits about famed tenor Enrico Caruso. One is that “… when Caruso sang the aria [“Vesti … Continue reading
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE AND DAVOS SKI-RUNNING
DOCTOR JOHN H. WATSON’S literary agent, a fellow named Arthur Conan Doyle, helped to make skiiing popular in Davos, Switzerland. Details are given in Harry Mount’s “How Conan Doyle Pioneered … 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
Simanaitis Says 