Tudela I had three good writing days in a row, but the city snared me again today. I served as chauffeur as my roommate, who is a bit hard up now, ran some of his errands – getting a W-2 from a former employer, then a trip to H&R Block to get his tax refund as […]
Monthly Archives: February 2009
The power of the sanctified dead.
20-Feb-09Pig Smiling, Bacon Frying.
19-Feb-09buy modafinil online from uk Sometimes you just see something on the street that seems to stand in symbolic relation to the whole city. Even the name ‘squeal’ speaks of the pleasure of horror and horror of pleasure.
Paul Barnes, Liszt, Music, and God.
19-Feb-09It’s curious and wonderful how certain doors open into further corridors. Paul Barnes, the transcriber of Philip Glass’s Orphee, turns out to be a kindred soul in his own right. One of his passions is the religious music of Franz Liszt, which has been sadly neglected (especially by the Church, which stands in desperate need […]
Quote of the day.
16-Feb-09“New Orleans is the only city where my brother and I were mistaken for boyfriend and girlfriend – when he was 18 and I was 11.” (In conversation today, from a friend of mine.)
The Evolution Scandal.
15-Feb-09I will confess that I have limited patience for the “evolution controversy,” so I will move quickly. The argumentation on both sides would shame your average high-school debate team. In brief: science does not deal in “truths;” it deals in data and theory. There is no third category in science. Evolution is most emphatically a theory […]
I headed downtown yesterday afternoon to do some bookshopping and to see some of the parades. No luck finding books by Richard Burton – I’ve now gone clear from the Catskills to the Gulf, checking all the likely bookshops, without finding a single copy of his 80 or so volumes of work. And such […]
The view from my window.
13-Feb-09Orphee.
13-Feb-09Several years ago I saw Philip Glass’ opera Orphee at the Glimmerglass Opera Festival in Cooperstown, and neither the music nor the production has left my mind. The piece is slowly being discovered, I feel – it was written in 1992, and while it did not receive a warm reception from the critics, that has never […]
Headless Body in Topless Bar.
13-Feb-09Great headlines they have around here: http://www.nola.com/timespic/stories/index.ssf?/base/sports-0/1234333330269230.xml&coll=1 I cut it out of the newspaper and put it on my wall, because it has such infinite theological subtlety to contemplate. Does make you realize, though, how strange Catholic school sports are. Read the whole piece to find that not only are St. Augustine and the […]
Learning to Drive.
15-Feb-09Is there anything in the world more lovely than Suzanne Vega? Besides the voice, the music, the esprit, the face, the whole thing, she’s a New Yorker who gets it and passes it on. The link brings you to a delightful article she wrote about learning to drive (as a 43-year-old, in the city; my, what […]