Monthly Archives: January 2019

How Art Made the World (How Humans Made Art and Art Made Us Human) 2 discs presented by Dr. Nigel Spivey. An unusual series spanning 5 continents and 100,000 years. Consists of 5 episodes. The best ones are “More Human … Continue reading →

(John Keats as painted by his friend Joseph Severn, 1821) -Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” -Shakespeare’s “Let me not to the Marriage of true minds” -Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” -Shelley’s “Ozymandias” (remembering Trump) -Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” … Continue reading →

(author of the only book of poetry I’d ever need…) -Shakespeare’s Hamlet -Woolf’s To the Lighthouse -Emily Dickinson’s collected poems (Harvard ed.) -Dickens’ Great Expectations -Conrad’s The Secret Agent -Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four -Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby -O’Neill’s A Long Day’s … Continue reading →

(8 of them, as suggested by Trevor and Anne) -Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” -Erik Satie’s first gymnopedie -Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” -Nat King Cole’s “That Sunday, That Summer” -Leonard Cohen’s “In My Secret Life” -The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” … Continue reading →

The fantastic annual New Year’s concert on PBS by the Vienna Philharmonic one week after Christmas. The perfect way to start the year musically. Usually includes scenes from around Vienna, ballet dancers, close-ups of the concert hall and the orchestra … Continue reading →

a life of thought and feeling, I’d choose feeling as E.E. Cummings described in his famous poem “Since feeling is first”.

You’ve had a lot of luck to still be here. You still have a lot going for you that others don’t necessarily have, likewise. And, always, things could be much, much worse.

-You might not have woken up this morning. -You might have cancer. -You might not own a car. -You might be a federal worker in the States. -You might be that Saudi girl in Bangkok afraid she’ll be killed if … Continue reading →

that I have used to direct and motivate my own life is to observe how others live theirs. One can learn a lot from the examples of others. Often when I am out in public or even watching tv news, … Continue reading →

is protecting the innocence of children from the ever-encroaching Big Bad World out there. But it can be done by: -keeping kids device- and phone-free as long as possible -through lots of reading and books exposure -through lots of hands-on … Continue reading →