ON BILINGUAL BRAINS
I ENJOYED READING Michael Hofmann’s “Not in Spanish,” in London Review of Books, May 21, 2020. This article is a review of The Bilingual Brain, by Albert Costa, Catalan cognitive … Continue reading
PLAYING CARD TIDBITS
THIS WEBSITE’S RECENT account on Trump doubling down got me to thinking about other playing card-related terms that have entered our language as metaphors or similes. Here’s a sampling, in … Continue reading
MG MAGNETTE OF THE 1950S
HERE’S A CAR looking like a rebadged police sedan on Grantchester (e.g., Season 5, Episode 2), and named after one piloted by Tazio Nuvolari. The MG Magnette of the 1950s … Continue reading
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT’S NIGHTMARE NUMBER THREE
BY WAY OF background, my meager appreciation of poetry seems to have come through vastly different means: “Whan that Aprille, with his shoures soote/The droghte of March hath perced to … Continue reading
THANKS, MARIE, FOR THE TINS
BACK WHEN I made my unorthodox attempt at the Aussie HSP (Halal Snack Pack), I cooked it in a recycled Marie Callender’s pie tin. Well, wouldn’t you know, Rukmini Iyer … Continue reading
THE OPERA AIN’T OVER TILL … WAIT! IT IS OVER!
IMAGINE: TEN OPERAS performed in the time of a single Wagner Götterdämmerung! Seth Colter Walls offered an example of this in “A Grand History of Small Operas,” The New York … Continue reading
HUMOR LURKING IN EXASPERATION
“IT’S ENOUGH TO make you laugh,” the adage goes. And, these days, there’s humor to be encountered in matters that are also exasperating and deadly serious. In particular, consider the … Continue reading
BEASTLY AND NAIVE PART 2
THE FAUVISTS RECEIVED their “beastly” moniker in the early 20th century because of their intense colors that more than surpassed nature: Reality was downright ignored. Today in Part 2, we … Continue reading
BEASTLY AND NAIVE PART 1
IN THE FIRST years of the twentieth century, Fauve and Naive painting were bridges between impressionism and abstract modernism. Fauvists were the “wild beasts.” At least one Fauvist called a … Continue reading
MAIGRET INVESTIGATES PART 2
YESTERDAY, WE MET Parisian Police detective Maigret, who had an evidently well-paid literary agent in Georges Simenon, what with Maigret’s 103 adventures chronicled between 1931 and 1972. Today in Part … Continue reading
