Another post to republish, written in March 2013, and relating to my life in 1958, aware of a momentous event in American history Now that my 16th birthday’s out of the way—it’s become a family event, this year bigger than last—the most exciting thing going on in my life is Winter’s retreat and Spring’s approach:… Continue reading Me and the Little Rock Nine
Category: the Americas
Country boy down in New Orleans – Snooks Eaglin
Snooks Eaglin was blind, spent much of his childhood learning to play guitar. Allow me to share one of my favorite blues with you. It's illustrated throughout with some beautiful paintings
Green Book
Green Book is based on real people, real events. It’s really about two characters: Tony “Lip” Vallelonga, famous for dealing with trouble, from a clannish Italian family in the Bronx ; Dr Donald Shirley, classical pianist from aspirational Jamaican parents, who’s grown up in an airy-fairy virtuoso-land, and happens to be black. In the course… Continue reading Green Book
Jordan Peterson & Susan Blackmore
following on and in response to Bryan's piece "Something Meaningful". Here are some notes I wrote while watching this debate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syP-OtdCIho “Peterson is a hard man to categorize” – he frowns at the very idea! “The new atheists have a problem with establishing an ethic” “Measuring well-being” – right Harris & meditation (Blackmore does it… Continue reading Jordan Peterson & Susan Blackmore
A Manhattan Odyssey
[Written on July 16th, 2016. See also the version published on Amazon.com, which includes a review of an earlier version published here on September 6th, 2013.] A reader of this blog has published a novel. I promised to submit a review for Amazon and then spent weeks agonizing about how to do it justice, instead… Continue reading A Manhattan Odyssey
Death Row
Yesterday the young man who shot 12 people in a cinema was sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of release, though some had expected the death penalty. No one has any idea why he did it—the court said it wasn’t relevant. I wasn’t interested in the verdict or his motives. It was just a… Continue reading Death Row
Intelligent Design
I’m sure there must be various ways to introduce the elements of science in schools, some good and some bad. Let the reader judge. Aged 9, I was excited by the prospect of Science lessons. We started by proving the existence of air, a project which seemed disappointingly trivial and uninteresting. We thought we knew… Continue reading Intelligent Design
Colloquy
I was moved by Ellie's recent comment: We engage in a colloquy reflecting one another’s light through the jewel of our own perception. In my last I spoke of the sound of waves breaking on the shore, and in subsequent comments the ebb and flow of tides. May this blog share the connectivity and outreach… Continue reading Colloquy
A Coney Island of the Mind
This is for you, dear poet of my youth, still 23 years and 21 days older than me (therefore 95), still here with the rest of us, enabling me to write this with a possibility it might reach you. I would say I’ve admired you from afar, but it’s not true, for I spent fifty… Continue reading A Coney Island of the Mind
Intersecting worlds
Reality is composed of many interwoven strands and nowhere are these delineated more vividly than in The Sun Temple. What shall I call it? A treatise? A short story? A memoir? A traveller’s tale? It’s all of these and a masterpiece of erudite psychedelia as well. Above all it is searingly honest and true, never… Continue reading Intersecting worlds
There and back
I'm not well up on the Odyssey. Isn’t it Homer’s tale of a long trip home? His hero Ulysses wants nothing more than to get back to his wife Penelope, his dog, and the embers of a familiar hearth. Home is that cosy place where nothing changes, that springboard from which a restless man leaves… Continue reading There and back
X: the unknown
Aerial View of San Francisco in the Fifties showing Coit Tower from avaloncm on flickr Consider the game of peekaboo. In England the mother says “Peep-bo!” when she reappears after hiding, and the baby gurgles in delight. Then she hides again, nothing elaborate, just ducks out of sight, and the baby starts to become anxious.… Continue reading X: the unknown
Prophecies
I went to last summer’s sunflower field. It’s been flattened and lightly manured, a pervasive smell of old cow-dung in the air. Three sunflowers were still standing, much as in my last visit: skeletal, downcast. I needed hat and gloves for the field is exposed; the wind bore the sharp sting of sleet. The neighbouring… Continue reading Prophecies
Travelling light
(Continued from "one Piece of Baggage") After writing the previous piece, I was fired up to continue immediately, but life intervened, & the mood is a little different now. I wanted to get feedback from others before putting in a tentative answer of my own to the question I had raised. Thanks, Imemine, Serenity and… Continue reading Travelling light
Wake up!
Petrol costs more than gasoline but it's still too cheap. They are of course two names for the same thing. Gasoline (US) has always been cheaper than petrol (UK). We don't have our own oil-wells. When the price really goes up it will hurt, but life on Earth will improve. Communities will be restored, obesity… Continue reading Wake up!
Responsibility
The Simpsons is hard on religion. Poor Ned Flanders thinks it his Christian duty to persist in loving-kindness to Homer, who’s unfailingly rude and never returns things he’s borrowed. His verbal tics (“Okely-dokely!” Home Sweet-diddly Home!”) are the only evidence of his suppressed urge to go berserk against such an unlovable next-door neighbour. What about… Continue reading Responsibility
a wayfarer’s notes 