…I’m not one of them, and never was. I never imagined the song could be about me. Actually, I’ve never been inside an A&F store, on some sort of vague “principle” formulated when I was about 14. That was also the age when I became a teeny bit obsessed with the band LFO. My years of listening to top-40 radio were limited but intensive. In particular, I would often listen to the top 8 at 8 on Q102, and then call in to try to be the 8th caller and win a prize. One night this worked,...
Continue reading...Arts
Poem of the Week
Part II of last week’s theme: villanelles. I’ve read and re-read this poem in at least three different English classes, and haven’t yet tired of it– to the contrary, I find more to like each time. And it seems apropos in the whirlwind of unpacking to post a poem dedicated to the fine art of losing things. One Art by Elizabeth Bishop The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost...
Continue reading...Poem of the Week
Most of the poems I\’ve posted here so far have been free verse– my usual preferred mode for both reading and writing poetry. But this is one of the best examples I\’ve seen of the complicated villanelle form: a 19 line poem consisting of five three-line stanzas followed by a concluding four-line stanza. Villanelles feature an ABA rhyme scheme, as well as two lines that repeat throughout, alternating as the last line of each stanza. Got that? Complex structure aside, it\’s a beautiful poem, the last stanza of which makes for a good mantra. Thanks to my...
Continue reading...No more printed Oxford English Dictionary?
Sad news for bibliophiles: The Oxford English Dictionary as we know it may never be printed (in full) again. Nigel Portwood, the CEO of the Oxford University Press, told the Sunday Times (behind a pay-wall, damn you Murdoch), via the Telegraph: “The print dictionary market is just disappearing, it is falling away by tens of per cent a year,” Nigel Portwood, the chief executive of OUP, told the Sunday Times. Asked if he thought the third edition would be printed, he said: “I don’t think so.” The current printed dictionary, the second edition, which was released in...
Continue reading...Late Summer Book Review
The plus side of my rainy Cape Cod trip was that I had plenty of time for reading. I finished two of the books that I brought with me (the one I won’t write about today is Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, which I thought was good but not great). This was the one I liked better: The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver As a former English major, I always have trouble naming favorite books or authors– just too many to choose from. But Kingsolver has been high on my list since high school, when my mom first introduced...
Continue reading...Illustrating the 21st Century Enlightenment
From the RSAnimate series, in this video, Matthew Taylor explores the meaning of 21st century enlightenment and how the idea might help us meet the challenges we face today. It’s probably the smartest 11 minutes on YouTube.
Continue reading...Poem of the Week
Lady Blaga is away this week on an likely much-deserved vacation, so I’m bringing you the poem of the week in her stead. Here we have Edna St. Vincent Millay, who was probably the coolest poet this side of Oscar Wilde. Here is one of my favorites of hers. Afternoon on a Hill I WILL be the gladdest thing Under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers And not pick one. I will look at cliffs and clouds With quiet eyes, Watch the wind bow down the grass, And the grass rise. And when lights begin...
Continue reading...Mad Men,"The Rejected"
Peggy, to Allison: “My problem is not your problem.” Well, it looks like Allison did not take Don’s rejection as well as it appeared last week, or even at the beginning of this episode. On the conference call, it’s clear how good Allison is at her job — she even gives Don a little bit of attitude. “Why is this empty?” he asks, holding up a bottle of booze. “Because you drank it all,” she quickly shoots back. But when Don gets a Polaroid of himself with Anna from his recent trip to California, Allison notices and...
Continue reading...The Girl Who Was Not Impressed
My interest in books tends to vary inversely to the amount of hype, so I had about zero curiousity in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. But then both my parents recommended the series highly, and they both have great (and divergent) taste in books, so I figured if they both enjoyed it, maybe I really was missing out in my Stieg Larsson-less existence. So I borrowed Dragon Tattoo, the first novel of the trilogy, and I slogged through the first hundred or so pages before finally finding myself engrossed. I didn’t expect that it would take so...
Continue reading...Poem of the Week: Child at Heart Edition
I’ve been suffering from some vague anonymous illness for the past week and a half, which is no fun. Unlike this poem’s protagonist, I’ve not been playing hooky, though on the plus side, it’s been very quiet in my office this week. In honor of mystery sicknesses, here’s one of my childhood favorite poems, which as I recall I memorized for a contest in middle school. Sick by Shel Silverstein ‘I cannot go to school today, ‘ Said little Peggy Ann McKay. ‘I have the measles and the mumps, A gash, a rash and purple bumps. My...
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