Professor Carol
I streamed the movie version (1969) of Hello Dolly on Monday afternoon as a treat for my sick granddaughter. She dug into the sofa, the way all sick kids do, surrounded by discarded Kleenexes and cough-drop wrappers. My goal was to show her something cheery, … Read more
I remember learning, late in high school, that the name “Halloween” was an incarnation of “Hallowed-Eve.” With minimal knowledge of the liturgical calendar, and no understanding that the “eve” in question was the night before All Saint’s Day (November 1st ), the whole thing puzzled … Read more
I admire people who manage to write a blog-post every day. Among them are friends like Charlene Notgrass whose heartfelt daily essays never fail to delight and inspire me, particularly in the way she illustrates them with classic artwork and historical photos from agencies like … Read more
I am making red-velvet cupcakes. It’s Patti’s birthday today, and also mine. Our daughter Helen forecast that her first-born would arrive on my birthday, defying the due date, so as to be my biggest gift ever. Helen’s doctor, the previous day, the 25th, told her, … Read more
Even without focusing on art history, a person tends to become familiar with the major artists in the Western canon. Iconic images by painters like Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Cezanne appear everywhere, from textbooks to restaurant décor. Such artists seem to have been the … Read more
It’s late Thursday afternoon here in Opatija, Croatia, a resort town planted by 19th-century Habsburg aristocrats on a scenic peninsula of the Adriatic. We just returned from our day trip to the impressive medieval town of Mošćenice which sprouts from a cliff high above the … Read more
Sitting at my desk, hoping to color the advancing twilight with waves of beautiful sound (and forget the exhaustion of scooping up the previous day’s basement flooding courtesy of Hurricane Debby), I selected a two-CD set of the complete works for piano by Maurice Ravel, … Read more
An editorial from May 14, 2024 in, of all places, Scientific American recently came to my attention. While short, it managed to proclaim many of the worn, incomplete, misleading statements about homeschooling, while reserving most of its real estate for references to isolated, tragic mistreatments … Read more
He stretched as far as he could, but even with the sleeves of his Oxford shirt rolled up, there was not enough arm to reach the toy. So, Radovan took the plunge, literally pushing his arm shoulder-deep into the water to fish around and snatch … Read more
