Francis Lai RIP
Francis Lai, French composer of soundtracks such as A Man And A Woman and Love Story (and, um, Emmanuelle 2) has died. From the Variety Obit: Lai’s plaintive piano melody…
Nan Shepherd on going barehanded and barefooted
From “The Living Mountain”: The hands have an infinity of pleasure in them. When I was a girl, a charming old gentlewoman said something to me that I have…
What poets, monks and nuns know about silence
Originally posted on Tracy Rittmueller:
Poets live with silence: the silence before the poem; the silence when the poem comes; the silence in between the words, as you drink the…
Monday Monster Movie – Mothra vs Godzilla
From 1964, Toho Studios’ heartbreaking portrayal of the insidious impact of corporate greed in post war Japan – a searing commentary on the dark underbelly of the economic boom of…
Happy Bank Transfer Day!
November 5th is, apparently, Bank Transfer Day. According to Wikipedia: Bank Transfer Day was a consumer activism[1] initiative calling for a voluntary switch from commercial banks to not-for-profit credit unions by November 5, 2011.[2][3][4] As of October 15,…
A family holiday with David Mamet
David Mamet’s reputation seems to have taken a bit of a nosedive in recent years. His “coming out” as an unapologetic free market conservative may have something to do with…
A 8½ mile putt
From “Golf’s Strangest Rounds: Extraordinary but True stories from over a Century of Golf” by Andrew Ward “A RECORD PUTT ABOVE THE ATLANTIC OCEAN, SEPTEMBER 1997 If a golfer…
Trying to do too much – lessons from the Life Study, the Trappists and David Mamet
Here is a post on my other blog “A Medical Education” inspired by a passage in Helen Pearson’s “The Life Project”, which I reviewed in the TLS. An understandable tendency to…
Séamus Sweeney 