Turkey Unveiled: A History
Turkey, whether as part of the Roman, the Byzantine or Ottoman Empires has been for millenia the hub to the …
Monthly Archives: March 2012
Earl Scruggs, 88: Gone
Oh man! Do I remember the first time I heard Flatt and Scruggs light up the room I was sequestered …
Adrienne Rich: Gone
III from Adrienne Rich’s “Twenty-One Love Poems:” via www.danagoldstein.com Since we’re not young, weeks have to do time for years …
The Official Story: Loss and Love in Argentina
The self declared “dirty war” of the Argentine junta that governed the country after Isabel Martinez de Perón, successor to …
Me Gusta La Gente Simple
Facundo Cabral is an Argentine singer known in folk-circles around the world and especially in Latin America. He will strongly remind …
The Age of Ignorance
Whew! Here’s some plain talk we don’t usually hear from the better behaved side of the aisle… Charles Simic is …
The Deer Hunter — Re-Seeing in 2012
Seeing Michael Cimino‘s The Deer Hunter 30 plus years after it made such an impression in 1978 as one of the …
Standing Alone: Lives of Light
Here’s a book I wish I’d had in the run-up and early years of the US invasion of Iraq. There …
Tony Judt: Thinking the Twentieth Century
Tony Judt, one of the vital public intellectuals of our time, died of ALS in August of 2010. Against all …
Violence Is My Theme — Vladimir Sorokin
Add this to my lengthening to-read-before-you-die list: From The Telegraph’s Best Fiction Books 2011: Moscow, 2028. A scream, a moan, …
The Train — A Movie Worth Getting Aboard
My grandfather was a railroad man on the Southern Pacific; my father a model railroader with a setup that filled …
The Mule – A Novel from Spain
Spain was the country of some former life of mine, I’m sure. I loved living there as a younger man …