I’ve been watching a lot of the programs about John F. Kennedy, and I really enjoyed the stories about his presidency, especially the PBS special. The hope and promise of this bright, articulate, principled man and his wonderful family brought back lots of happy childhood memories. I don’t care if […]
In 1901, a portrait of this two-year-old was used in an advertisement for Mellin baby food. The portrait was painted by his mother, a magazine illustrator named Maude Humphrey.
I just got back from a wonderful trip to the Commonwealth of Virginia, highlighted by a visit to the Hollywood Costume Exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, great movies at the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville, a tour of Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, and […]
I don’t know why it took me so long to pick up Professor Edmund Sears Morgan’s biography of Benjamin Franklin. It was a Christmas present from my mother, who had it signed by Professor Morgan. He was a family acquaintance because he had a cabin on the shores of Conway […]
I went to the unveiling of John Sendelbach’s sculpture “Brookie” on Deerfield Street in Greenfield, made from cutlery. It inspired me to create a sculpture of my own: “Orestes Pursued by the Furies.”
Ever wonder what it was like to have dinner with Attila the Hun? An ambassador named Priscus from the Byzantine Empire dined with Attila and left an account of it, which I found in a book called “The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness: Ancient Rome” edited by John E, Lewis. […]
My sincere apologies to the readers of this blog, if indeed there are any left, for the recent dearth of entries. I just had that feeling that I had nothing to say to the world. And yet, all this time, I have been reading, and have learned lots of interesting […]
Precisely to the Brim I don’t know whether this is a poem. Or not. I don’t know why it has taken me more than half a century to figure out that measuring the water you put in the teapot when you’re making tea or coffee saves a lot of time […]
As the Democratic Party chooses a candidate for the presidency in 2016, we should remember the party’s commitment to losing candidates, dating back to the great William Jennings Bryan, who lost not one, not two, but three presidential elections. We should remember the example of Eleanor Roosevelt, who refused to […]
Is there a poem you know by heart? I hope so. When I was in seventh grade, I memorized Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” thinking it would come in handy later. Fifty years on, it hasn’t, at least in the way I originally thought it might. But it does […]