photo courtesy New York Times Ok, I may just be a little cranky today.  I'm going to lose my beloved dog and I'm beyond devastated about it.  And yes, I need something else to become fixated on today…….. to yap about, to become full of ire about, in order that I might not just turn to mush.  It didn't take me too long to find it once I opened the newspaper.  I already knew the story.  The article just became a vehicle of convenience. Well, … [Read more...]

 image courtesy Matthew Weiner and AMC Well, so many people have been mourning the end of the series Mad Men over the last few days. (Not to mention the end of David Letterman.)  courtesy the New Yorker Well, actually, many have been in mourning since the end of the show was announced in 2013.  And, perhaps herein lies the problem, or should I say an illustration of the "Mad Men effect".   That would be "our" so-typical propensity to … [Read more...]

Cellini, the family Medici, the Borgias, Vivaldi, Dante, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis of Assisi, Julius Caesar, Columbus, Fellini, Caruso, Galileo, Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Raphael, Caravaggio, Garibaldi, Pavarotti, Marco Polo, Stradivari, Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, Scarlatti, Bellini, Machiavelli, Andrea Amati, Marconi……..  just a tiny fraction of a list. If, like me, you are not really all that well versed in the culture, history and … [Read more...]

 photo courtesy Amazon.com Last evening, I listened with interest to an interview with the author Cynthia Barnett about her new book Rain, on On Point on NPR.  The interview wound around a variety of issues concerning rain as a phenomenon to be considered on practical as well as more oblique points.  I became more intrigued as the conversation turned to Emily Dickinson, the prolific poet, who, Ms. Barnett claims was much more productive when … [Read more...]