Who couldn’t like Robbie Burns? Well, the British, I suppose.  And he didn’t wear well with the Edinburgh Scots.  When I turned the page from William Blake in my trek through The Norton Anthology of English Literature, there was Robert Burns with all his apostrophes.  After I got used to the a’s, the whas and  Read the Rest…

It hit me the other day what I wanted to do for a summer reading project: read The Norton Anthology of English Literature Vol. I and II.  Collective gasp all around.  This venerable collection has been around a long time but I don’t believe anyone has actually read it—certainly not the college students for which  Read the Rest…

I discovered Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s writing when I was 18.  Her Diaries and Letters from the years 1922-1945 were beginning to come out in print and I read all five volumes. (Bring Me a Unicorn, Hour of Gold Hour of Lead, Locked Rooms and Open Doors, The Flower and the Nettle, War Within and Without.)  Read the Rest…

Last week was awful. I was sickened by the news of the Boston Marathon bombing and I was stunned by the Senate’s down vote on gun control.  Several medieval bills regarding reproductive rights put me in mind of other medieval procedures, like castration.  A few more boulders came down in the on-going avalanche of ignorant  Read the Rest…

I have a list of time sensitive stuff I need to be attending to and every time I look at it, I can’t focus.  There they are, swimming in front of me, the soul-destroying articles of an over-scheduled, self-employed life: taxes, emissions, ink cartridges, Easter ham, April billing, water-color classes (Five items, all dependent on  Read the Rest…

In my last blog post I was a week away from the Just Off Broadview Music Festival and more or less losing my mind with trying to control its outcome.  If you recall, my friend Mary-Ellis had counseled me to do something else, to think about something else.  I did.  I started reading the psychoanalyst  Read the Rest…

I would never have decided to read Ulysses all on my own.  But my friend Nancy invited me to join her in a project of reading one episode a week, and I thought there are worse ways to spend four months.  I knew that Ulysses is considered Difficult.  Whole college courses are devoted to this  Read the Rest…

I was in Portland this weekend.  Oregon.  I was there just long enough to know which way to turn when I stepped out of the elevator without having to squint at the hall sign, trying to determine if 415 came before or after 428. I traveled down on the train. I had a stack of  Read the Rest…

Gifts are the most fun and the most fraught devices in the American Christmas season which begins the day after Labor Day with the first sighting of the little drummer boy and ends with the breaking of New Year’s resolution at about 12:01 AM New Year’s Day. Let me digress for a rant here about  Read the Rest…

The fussy, self-important and over-committed woman is not one of the more attractive stock characters in our society but she likes to infiltrate her archetype throughout our ranks during the holidays.  This year, she got a toe-hold in me and was meddling with my nervous and digestive systems in no time at all.  It started  Read the Rest…