Relativity There was a young lady named Bright Whose speed was far faster than light; She set out one day In a relative way And returned on the previous night. Einstein developed his theory of general relativity between 1907 and 1915, with contributions by many others after 1915. The final form of general relativity was published in 1916. This…
Two visits in thirty days and only just scratched the surface of what this city has to offer. We parked on Broadway just by the Ritz (where Lucille Ball made her debut performance, a young Frank Sinatra performed with the Tommy Dorsey Band, and Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Prima sang) and walked around the corner and through the community garden. It’s hard…
Some authors are blessed with illustrators who enhance their work with the distinction of their own. So it was in 1919 with Richard Aldington. When Images of War was first published it was with a cover design and eleven colored woodcut illustrations by Paul Nash. They are matched with poems and depict scenes from the western front – trenches, bombardment, ruins, barbed wire,…
Forgetfulness The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little…
There are pockets of Poughkeepsie that still have a rural look and feel. Cows graze and the corn is ripe for harvest. Old Overlook Road is one of them. It’s under fifteen minutes from my house and today I went to pay tribute to its most famous resident – Kate Millett who died in Paris last week. In 1970 Millett…
Farm work is one of the best jobs for getting to know people as they really are. The First Job and the Sweetest Sylvia Plath’s first job was on a farm in the summer of 1950. I am grateful to the inestimable Maria Popova (Brain Pickings) for these extracts from her journal and from an article in which…
Paul Nash’s fascination with aerial bombardment led him to an ecstatic vision of “the sky blossoming with floating flowers”. This, and William Blake’s poem “Ah Sunflower”, inspired his late paintings, in which an airborne sunflower glides over imagined landscapes. Nash was seriously ill with asthma (he died of heart failure in 1946) and his growing sense of mortality is reflected…
Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge… At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. – Jawaharlal Nehru Indian Declaration of Independence, on eve of independence, August 15 1947. In celebration of the 70th anniversary of Indian…
“I was so rushed I had not time to go into the details,” – Cyril Ratcliffe. The political leaders of the independence movement in British India were unable to agree on a united post-colonial future. The result was a plan for a territorial division. The task was huge and fraught with difficulties. The consequences were traumatic. August 15th marks the…
After early mist the morning of Sunday August 18 1940 was bright with clear skies. It came to be known as the hardest day in the Battle of Britain. The detail from Diana Gardner’s wood engraving makes it seem like night but there is a figure on the bottom left looking up and shielding his eyes from the sun. It…
The land army fights in the fields. It is in the fields of Britain that the most critical battle of the present war may well be fought and won. – Lady Denman, the Director of the Women’s Land Army, WW2 Who Won the War? It wasn’t the WRENS who won the war Whatever the WRENS may say It was the…
In Ivor Gurney’s nightmarish vision, the dead among the living bear dire warnings and mockery. Ballad of the Three Spectres As I went up by Ovillers In mud and water cold to the knee, There went three jeering, fleering spectres, That walked abreast and talked of me. The first said, ‘Here’s a right brave soldier That walks the dark unfearingly;…
Some culinary disasters can be repurposed. Here is Glen Baxter on polenta: And then there are times when you just have to cut your losses. Some poems just write themselves. Here is Carolyn Kizer writing – ranting and venting might be more accurate – about a Craig Claiborne recipe she tried from the NY Times. It probably didn’t help her…
Russian – American Romance In my land and yours they do hit the hay and sleep the whole night in a similar way. There’s the golden Moon with a double shine. It lightens your land and it lightens mine. At the same low price, that is for free, there’s the sunrise for you and the sunset for me. The wind…
Here again – for the summer solstice – are those Wittenham Clumps. By the early 1940s Nash’s was in declining health. Suffering from chronic asthma – triggered his wife Margaret believed by inhaling gas at Passchendaele in 1917 – he had endured several spells in hospital. He and Margaret, began to make visits to nearby Boars Hill where their friend Hilda Harrison lived…