Lots of appropriately scornful responses to the charity Oxfam’s Inclusive Language Guide published this week. First of all, it’s 92 pages long. You can read and download at the link. I can’t say I’ve scoured every page and possibly some of it may be both sensible and helpful in providing respectful ways to talk about a whole range of…
A recent NYTimes Cooking newsletter from Melissa Clark drew my attention to the article about Raghavan Iyer by Kim Severson Mr. Iyer’s debilitating cancer treatment gave him the idea for the Revival Project, a searchable database of comfort-food recipes, with the goal of nourishing patients with dishes suited to their specific origins, preferences and medical conditions. The recipes are organized by…
Two centuries after William Hogarth published his engravings of the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, Rebecca West wrote a morality tale of decline and fall updated for the C20th –The Modern “Rake’s Progress” 1934. Eighteenth-century Rakewell was the spendthrift, dissolute son of a rich merchant who goes to London and wastes his money on luxurious living, prostitution, and gambling…
Felled by the dreaded lurgy in early January I was sidelined from my usual reading routine. It’s hard to concentrate when little spikes of fever send your mind swimming into the stratosphere. The symptoms weren’t that bad but the fatigue was real and concentration was not at peak performance. An Agatha Christie re-read was in order. I read seven of…
Vimeo has taken down the video “Affirmation Generation” but you can see it here. Take the time to watch this well-made and important video. To read more about the movie go here. “Affirmation Generation: The Lies of Transgender Medicine,” was made by self-described “lifelong, West Coast Liberal Democrats”. The film includes interviews with therapists, mental health professionals, and medical doctors…
Researching Marienbad and the Savoy led me to Erika Mann and all the gossip, scandal, politics, and drama of her family. I wanted to read her account of life in pre-war Germany The Lights Go Down in part of my preparation for the 1940 Club and here. I couldn’t track down a copy so I read School for Barbarians: Education…
Here’s a treat for those who relish fiction with off-the-wall cognitive mayhem – The Hearing Trumpet Suddenly it seemed as if everyone in my online book world had read it (see here and here for here examples). It’s a short novel by Leonora Carrington, better known for her wildly idiosyncratic art. It was written in 1950, first published in 1974,…
In Our Flag Stays Red (1948) Phil Piratin – the Communist Party MP for Mile End – wrote an account of the 1940 occupation of the Savoy Hotel. This is just one of the many stories I came across in the research for the Marienbad – my post about Fritz Stingl and his escape from Czechoslovakia in 1939. Fritz was…
The third destination of our Met Museum art extravaganza was Beyond the Light – Identity and Place in Nineteenth-Century Danish art. Plenty of light and lots of water. Plus wonderful drawings and paintings of Denmark, ancient ruins, lonely figures on beaches, ships, harbors, woodlands, portraits, and empty rooms. The exhibit overview includes the following background information: Denmark in the nineteenth…
A wander crosstown to the Met with a destination. Or rather three. The first – Water Memories – explores water’s significance to Indigenous peoples and Nations in the United States through historical, modern, and contemporary artworks. The second – right next door – Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection rotation honors the diversity of Native life with…
So much gloom, doom, and disaster that it’s important to find counterbalances. Here are a few recent bright spots. Glasgow and Bristol and the USA By all accounts, the Standing For Women event in Glasgow went extremely well. The videos show that the turnout was strong and many women were able to tell their stories. The opposition to women speaking…
I do remember the trial of Dr. Bodkin Adams. My family took The Daily Herald back in 1957 and I was old enough to pay attention. I recall being fascinated by the name Bodkin and who could not be interested in the sensational trial of a doctor accused of drugging and murdering his patient in order to profit from a…
Poems by Charles Simic (1938-2023) January Children’s fingerprints On a frozen window Of a small schoolhouse. An empire, I read somewhere, Maintains itself through The cruelty of its prisons. The Election They promised us free lunch And all we got Edna Is wind and rain And these broken umbrellas To wield angrily At cars and buses Eager to run us…
I follow the art historian Richard Morris on Twitter and his tweets are a daily delight – each one providing a insight into a painter, a period, a life, or work of art. This week he referenced the Guardian obituary of the wonderful writer Ronald Blythe who has just died at the age of 100. Here’s the tweet: ‘Winter Evening,…
Every Christmas growing up my family received a greeting card from the Stingl family. I knew that my grandmother, mother, and aunt had known Fritz Stingl in the 1930s. He was Czech and he had arrived at Croydon airport as a refugee and been turned back even though they were at the barrier waiting to sponsor him. And then there…