Unfortunately I was just so disappointed! Les Miz is one of my three favorite musicals, and I had never seen a professional live performance of it. (I’d seen the movie, and I’d seen an excellent high-school performance.) So I had… Read More ›
Life
Roses
They officially belong to the neighbors… but they like visiting us on our side of the fence.
Signs of being an introvert
Posted by someone who doesn’t know me… but they sure have it right! Seven out of eight in my case. I don’t know the significance of the color of the numbers, but only #7 doesn’t fit for me:
Vance and Moore… back when both of them were younger
Every day, it seems, I read something by or about two of our distinguished politicians: J.D. Vance and Wes Moore. Well, one of them is distinguished; the other is, well… what are the appropriate adjectives to describe someone who has… Read More ›
Taunton vs. Colmar?
Several decades ago — at this point I don’t remember exactly how many — I was traveling in France and happened to stop in Strasbourg and Colmar because of recommendations in a guidebook. These two are not by a long… Read More ›
They understand us across the pond.
Trump claims that the USA has regained the respect of everyone across the globe, but the Marsh Family knows the truth:
A note from Langston Hughes to my dad
Seventy years ago the great Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes penned this inscription in the front of my dad’s copy of Hughes’s A Pictorial History of the Negro in America. (Note that Hughes’s co-author, Milton Meltzer, added his own autograph… Read More ›
This year’s traditional Christmas dinner
In accordance with long-established tradition, Barbara and I went to Chau Chow yesterday for a delicious Christmas feast: beef noodle, Chinese broccoli, har gao, shumai, xiao long bao, shrimp paste in tofu skin, stuffed taro, and pan-fried noodles with jumbo… Read More ›
“So you want a model railroad” — a well-known… okay… not-so-well-known Warner Bros. film from 1955
When you watch a movie made in 1955, you can’t judge it with 2025 glasses. A lot has happened in 70 years! With that caveat, enjoy this short Warner Bros. film. Also keep in mind, as the French say, plus… Read More ›
Everything possible
Back in 1983 I first heard this beautiful song, as a result of a recommendation by my sister Ellen. It was written and performed by Fred Small, who is least known as a lawyer, better known as a UU minister,… Read More ›
“I am a Jewish man.” —Daniel Cainer
As I was thinking about these matters yesterday (for obvious reasons), this popped up in my YouTube feed. Who knows why the algorithm chose it for me. In any case, even though I was never a bar mitzvah — or… Read More ›
No Trump. No Kings.
Be sure to turn on closed captioning for this one, so you can see the parts that you can’t hear: https://youtu.be/_2KOMWr0qNA
Very sad news
My sister, Ellen Davidson, died unexpectedly in her sleep Wednesday morning at age 77. No information yet about cause of death, although she did have Parkinson’s, so that may be it. If you knew her, you realize that she was… Read More ›
Morning glories on a glorious morning
Chiasmus here. (You can look it up.)
Truly these are oldies but goodies — songs from… wait for it… two millennia ago!
Back in the ancient world, when I was in high school, a friend and classmate of mine was named Dwight Wayne Batteau, better known (then and now) as Robin Batteau. For quite a while now he has been half of… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 