I watched a smarmy romantic comedy last night, and for some reason it reminded me of a smarmy scene in a play I once wrote that was lost in a housefire in 1998. I have the scripts of the rest of the play, but this scene was lost altogether. Without […]
When he was eight years old, John P. Parker was taken from his mother, chained to an elderly man and forced to walk from Norfolk, Virginia, to Richmond. There he saw the kindly old man whipped to death. Then he was chained to a group of slaves and forced to […]
I’m getting a lot of enjoyment and inspiration from a booklet put out by the South Deerfield Congregational Church, where I go with my mom. Every year during Lent they collect reflections from as many members as possible. What a great idea. The booklet is called “Finding God in Unexpected […]
One Sunday morning in 1973 I took a canoe ride on Conway Lake in New Hampshire. I was about to start my senior year at Yale and I was getting three credits for an independent study project on the Aaron Burr Conspiracy in the newly-formed American Studies Department. Professor Edmund […]
I thought a lot about whether to write this entry, because it’s about a lesson I learned about dementia/Alzheimer’s which might be of value to someone else. My mom and dad have moved to Deerfield from their home in New Hampshire. My job has been to keep Sally happy, a […]
What this blog needs is more pretty girls. Taken at a recent brunch at “Harmony House.”
I’ve been studying slavery lately, American slavery that is, nastier then most other forms of slavery because it destroyed families in a way that slavery in other countries, and even in the ancient world, did not. I believe American slavery should be studied because of the perspective it provides on […]
I’m having lots of fun with a great new volume of H.L. Mencken’s Notes on Democracy by Dissident Books. They have taken the time and trouble to present the work with all the notes that are needed for the 21st century reader to properly understand it. Mencken, who famously covered […]
When I pick a book for the sauna, it has to be a durable, inexpensive edition. My latest one is a rare 41st edition copy of Kenneth Roberts’ Arundel from the Rundlett Library, wherever that is, so it has a nice durable cellophane cover. Roberts works were hugely successful all […]
I’ve been looking over some of the books I picked up this summer at the tag sales and rediscovered this lovely volume calle Fancy This, by Jack Frost. It’s a collection of Frost’s sketches for the Boston Herald, and besides the lovely artwork, it’s full of useful information. Did you […]