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The Ruby Slippers
I read the odd news this week that someone had been arrested in Minneapolis for the 2005 theft of the famous ruby slippers from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. The FBI recovered...
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The Horny, Stinky Mephitidae of Winter
Snowdrops aren’t the only sign of spring approaching. These weeks before the vernal equinox, as the days are getting noticeably longer and the frozen core is melting out of the soil, leaving it...
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“Thanks For the Trouble You Took From Her Eyes.”
Two years ago this month I fell in love, for about the fourth time in my life, and late-late one night we needed a song to hear before nodding off to dreamland. That’s when I came across Marissa...
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Rain in Ponckhockie
As I write this I have the pleasure of watching water waft across the asphalt in front of my house – water that used to be in the crawl space under my house, that is. I watch it collect in the gutter...
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Original Cast Album
And speaking of Smiles of a Summer Night, lots of people who didn’t spend the 90s ticking Swedish film after Swedish film off their watch list know it through Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. I...
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Smiles of a Summer Night
Last week’s solstice reminded me of the Swedish romantic comedy Smiles of a Summer Night. That’s an understatement. Really any long summer evening with a slow moonrise makes me dream about recreating...
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Revolution and “Revolutions”
Yesterday April 27th was the 377th anniversary of King Charles I’s flight from Oxford to take refuge with the Scottish Army in the North during the English Civil War. The Protestant New Model Army was...
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Gone To Kingston
Walking down the street in Kingston, New York this week I was stopped in my tracks by the smell of lilac. It occurred to me that it’s been almost a year since I posted here. I’ve been gone. Gone? It...
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Lilacs and ‘Ever-Returning Spring’
One morning this week, there was plenty of light in the sky at 6am, and powdery floral odors wafting in the window. On my walk the night before I stopped three times to smell the lilacs in particular....
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Sweetness and Power
Yesterday morning, like most days this year, I made tea and toast and read the headlines before attempting to write something. “Made the mistake of reading the headlines,” I often say, since tuning in...
View ArticleMonica Vitti
Monica Vitti, who died at age 90 today, had the delivery of a Redgrave, the poise of Audrey Hepburn, and a nose as gorgeous as Streisand’s. I was not surprised to read, in her obituaries, that she was...
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How Clowns Go
I confess that I thoroughly enjoy end-of-year stories with titles like “Those We Lost,” roundups of the best-known celebrity deaths before we move on in the new year, and get on with the business of...
View ArticleWhat Birds Do
What Birds Do You talk about birds as if they are calling to you through the window at the bottom of your long list of things to do, the oblong -shaped aspirations, the unfinished sculptures and empty...
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For the Love of Trees in April
They’re changing costumes like mad! It’s that particular week of spring when daily tree-watching pays off again and again, in either surprising or perfectly predictable ways: the week the trees bud...
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Going Home to “Return of the Native”
Sitting around an open fire one sunset this fall I proposed reading Return of the Native to my wife, and we took turns reading chapters of it out loud between Thanksgiving and Christmas, till we read...
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A Deep State Film Festival
Two films I watch about once every year are titles that, I admit, I sometimes hear or say as I’m picturing a scene from the other: The Manchurian Candidate and Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learned to...
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Impeachment 2: Why It Didn’t Work
What mystified me most about the Democrats’ impeachment strategy back in January was why Adam Schiff was allowed to talk for so long. In baseball (sorry friends overseas), after you’ve had a bruising...
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Like Garlic Mustard? YOU Eat It
There’s an allelopath on the loose in my town, committing crimes in broad daylight, and I’ve been spending a good part of this quarantine handing out vigilante justice. It’s edible, as many people have...
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Mysteries of Mithras: Klimov, Macfarlane, and You Know Who
In the first scene of Elem Klimov’s Come and See, two boys are digging in a sandbank pulling out Nazi helmets and belt buckles. It’s not clear if they’re in an old campsite or a mass grave. The only...
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The Soviet Cinema Power Couple
If you’re feeling like four and a half hours of emotional horror, watch a Soviet double feature about the worst days of World War Two. I did just that, to “celebrate” the 75th anniversary of V-E Day....
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