Last week saw a short foray into Connecticut. This included a day at Hammonasset Beach State Park, a dip in the sea (Long Island Sound), and a visit to the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme. The weather cooperated, the days were sunny and the rain confined itself to overnight and early morning. The beach made for a lovely walk…
“I like to show the beauty of things that no one looks at twice.” — Eliot Hodgkin In a letter written to Brinsley Ford in 1975…
Carole Robertson (14), Carol Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), and Cynthia Wesley (14) died on September 15, 1963, when a bomb exploded during Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The bombing came just days after the federal ruling came for Alabama to integrate the school system. Four Little Girls, September 15, 1963,…
Digging into the women writers of WW2 led me to the short stories of Anna Kavan whose life and work brought to mind Gertrude Abercrombie whose art is often said to be influenced by Giorgio de Chirico who wrote what John Ashberry called the first surrealist novel – Hebdomeros – that some have compared to Anna Kavan’s novel Ice that…
In his series of WW1 epitaphs, Rudyard Kipling comments on the all too common fate of a new soldier at the front who – curious about the enemy – cannot resist taking a look and unwittingly exposes his head to a sniper. The beginner On the first hour of my first day In the front trench I fell.…
“I am not interested in complicated things nor in the commonplace, I like to paint simple things that are a little strange.” – Gertrude Abercrombie After Pied Piper and The Thinking, my explorations led me into the byways of British literature of WW2 evacuation and evacuees. On that journey, I made – and continue to make – discoveries: Writers and…
There was a period in the early 1960s when my parents had a television (in those days you rented) and one of the programs I liked to watch was All Our Yesterdays produced by Granada Television. It was a look back in time based on the newsreel footage of that week twenty-five years ago – a week-by-week journey through the…
Looks like having government officials who are Ignorant and Stupid is nothing new. Chinese poet Su Tung-Po nailed it centuries ago. I was browsing through the International Times for 1969 – the way one does. And there – amid the fevered, underground, counter-cultural world of macrobiotics, head shop ads, rock and roll, anarchy, activism, and psychedelia as seen from North…
November Show’s over, folks. And didn’t October do A bang-up job? Crisp breezes, full-throated cries Of migrating geese, low-floating coral moon. Nothing left but fool’s gold in the trees. Did I love it enough, the full-throttle foliage, While it lasted? Was I dazzled? The bees Have up and quit their last-ditch flights of forage And gone to shiver in their…
There, there, said the parent to the anguished child whose ice cream fell to the gutter. There! There! said the whale watcher pointing at the spout on the horizon. There’s no there there, said Gertrude Stein when she visited Oakland in 1934 and found her childhood home razed to the ground. In what they called an experiment, Stamp and Rave…
I like to learn and one of the things I have learned is that I really don’t like being taught. There’s been a few notable exceptions but generally being “taught” is not my cup of tea and brings out the worst in me. So – rather at cross grain – I enrolled in a short online Creativity course. It helped…
A recent visit to Montreal found us at the MAC Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal Fortified with coffee and breakfast treats at Olive et Gourmando on Rue St. Paul, we walked up Rue Saint-Pierre and onto Rue de Bleury to Rue Sainte-Catherine. We managed to miss the entrance – even though it was right in front of us – but nonetheless…
In September we heard Ta-Nehisi Coates in conversation with Oprah Winfrey at the Apollo in NYC. The topic was his first novel The Water Dancer and the ticket price included a copy of the book. The conversation was interesting – Oprah is really good at this kind of thing and she clearly loved the book. And so did I. It’s…
I love this poem by Hans Magnus Enzensberger. It’s a commentary on the fact that – even in the darkest times – simple acts of unexpected generosity and kindness have the capacity to remind us that not everything is bleak and hopeless even in a nasty, brutish, trumpian world. Optimistic Little Poem Now and then it happens that somebody shouts…
Mustn’t Grumble We mustn’t grumble We have wireless and cable And there’s food in the shops. Beyoncé had a birthday and the game is on tonight. We have work to do. And all the really bad things like weather and politics are a long way away so we don’t have to worry. And there’s always pizza delivery. We can still walk…