“The pleasure [of motoring] is seeing Nature as I could in no other way see it; my car having ‘tops’, I get Nature framed —and picture after the other delights my artistic eye.” * Henri Matisse is famous for his paintings of views through the windows of hotel rooms, studios, and houses. This is a landscape triptych through the windscreen…
We’ve been lucky with the weather in NYC this September. Many bright, warm days The aftermath of the powerful hurricane that has devastated areas of the South East is now giving us a little rain. Not so lucky there where hurricane Helene was deadly across five states after making landfall on Thursday. Some of the worst flooding the South has…
In Meaning Loss, Sanje Ratnavale has written a practical and timely contribution to an important debate that all schools should be having. It’s about curriculum and reimagining the sense of purpose that has too often become mired and muddled by ideological squabbles and all-out hot button culture wars. But first – a digression: Consider the now familiar tale of a…
Our friend Carol said we just had to read David Sedaris in the September 9, 2024, New Yorker – “The Hem of His Garment about his audience with the Pope. It was hilarious, she said, and so it was. It’s an irreverent and self-deprecating account of the Pope’s invitation to comedians to visit the Vatican. And – because they are comedians…
Half a century ago I received an anonymous telephone call from a woman who said she had found my name and number in a message on a wall in the ladies’ lavs in Victoria Station where, she said, I offered some (unmentionable) services free to all and sundry. Initially taken aback, this incident soon became a cause for much household…
As always, one thing leads to another. This time it’s the post from Gert Loveday’s Fun With Books that highlights Elizabeth Bishop’s tribute to her friend Robert Lowell – her poem North Haven .You can read it here Elizabeth Bishop Islands are Beautiful In an interview, Bishop spoke of North Haven – an island in Penobscot Bay, Maine: I sometimes…
OK – so this image is misleading. My photo app tells me this is from last year when – on this date – our stroll took us to the beach at Towd Point in Southampton. But all the rest are either the immediate neighborhood or Wave Hill in the Bronx. The community garden at W.91st Street in Riverside Park…
One thing leads to another. How do you get from the Daily Poem in the Paris Review to a re-read of The Loved One and an exploding portable toilet courtesy of Evelyn Waugh? Here’s the Annmarie Drury poem that caught my attention: Walking in Hills of Which One Has Seen Many Paintings Your task differs: to leave the world to…
It has been nearly four months since the publication of the Independent Review of gender identity services for children and young people, known as the Cass Report. There has been no mention of it by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) or its member associations. There has also been no discussion on the NAIS membership Diversity listserv, which frequently…
I put this image together in honor of the Holy Month that’s now upon us. Given the proliferation of days, weeks, and months dedicated to assorted gender identities, you would be forgiven for thinking that every day, week, and month was devoted to special-gender-identity-recognition and to the victims of heteronormativity which of course is a system of oppression created by…
Before decamping to Brooklyn for the month I saw this on a utility box on Riverside Drive. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to share thoughts about Columbia University. But the daffs were out and there were others busy stamping their ideas on the sidewalk by the park. These were presumably inspired by Jonathan Haidt’s new book – The Anxious…
Midge Hazelbrow, the indomitable co-head of Wayward St. Etheldreda’s Academy, took herself for a brisk constitutional down Riverside Drive to the Eleanor Roosevelt statue. By the time she stepped back into the St. Etheldreda’s building that had been her professional home for almost thirty years, her mind was clear. Of course, she’d already apologized to Tim Endibel for her injudicious…
When I taught fourth and fifth grade at a school that didn’t assign grades, the topic occasionally came up among the students. On the bus, they’d hear their peers from other schools boasting about their As on tests for spelling or naming all the state capitals. Grades seemed like fun and useful bragging points. We always closed out the week…
It was the Gert Loveday review of Rancid Pansies (it’s an anagram) that set me off to read James Hamilton-Paterson’s trilogy of comic novels that chronicles the outlandish misadventures of Gerald Samper. Part Henry Wilt and part Bertie Wooster with a touch of the growing pains of Adrian Mole, Gerald Samper – of the Shropshire Sampers – is his own…
A post on LinkedIn caught my attention this week. It’s had over 11,000 views so I’m not alone. Tanya de Grunwald and Dr. Julie Scanlon had an announcement about the launch of a podcast here and here that you can also read below. The title caught my attention and then the topics, some of which have been rumbling about in…