Monthly Archives: March 2018

(my first exposure to Joyce in the late ’60s via the popular green paperback edition) (the 1977 film by Joseph Strick who did Ulysses in 1966) An only child of the ’50s, I was often plunked in front of the … Continue reading →

(from Journal of Katherine Mansfield, 1914-1922) “By health, I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love–the earth and the wonders thereof–the sea–the sun. All that we mean when speak … Continue reading →

This morning on Antiques Road Show, a mature adult son confidently sat with his mother’s vase and letter from his aunt regarding its importance and Tiffany nature. As things unfolded, the appraiser identified the vase–which the son couldn’t find with … Continue reading →

Virginia Woolf writing about the greatest writers and greatest minds– “If one is a man, still the woman part of the brain must have effect; and a woman must also have intercourse with the man in her. Coleridge perhaps meant … Continue reading →

(photo of William Blake’s “Glad Day” aka “The Dance of Albion”–an image of Albion liberating himself and others from limited/limiting materialism) Granted professional performers need to work hard to make a living, you still have to look beyond that simplistic, … Continue reading →

Tennessee Williams’ The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is, basically, Blanche du Bois revisited: the ‘problem’ of lonely, aging women. Karen Stone’s husband who was some 20 years older than her was more of a father-protector than a lover, so … Continue reading →

“Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.” –Simone Weil, Gravity and Grouse “I have to protect myself from the toxicity of this culture.” –Kate Braverman, quoted in “From the Tropic of L.A.” “The moment … Continue reading →

1st American edition of this essay collection; cover by her sister Vanessa Bell, 1958 (Random quotes from Virginia Woolf’s last-published, posthumous collection of criticism. Each one rich, expansive and yet so-o concise. Each one a potential subject for a meditation, … Continue reading →

Jean-Paul Sartre, the key French Existential philosopher, correctly stated that life is mainly and ultimately an individual matter, even if ‘we make it up as we go’. He’s right that, over time, we largely exist and, in reaction to this … Continue reading →

The dumb luck of my life–so much of it, continuing… For what am I most grateful beyond love, family, nature, the arts? 16 years retired from teaching now, I’d have to say the incredible freedom, including that when a preschooler, … Continue reading →