a blind flaneur

I’ve never wished to be a teenager again. I’m happy as an old geezer knowing what I know now. If I were 16, though, I’d jump on this opportunity to follow my nose to Provence.
The AFB Blog announces: “AFB and French beauty company L’Occitane are teaming up again to send four visually impaired […]

I had the privilege of hosting a dinner for some local poets and Jonathan Williams when he passed through our town in 1977. It had to have been potluck. None of us had much money then. Lentil soup was my culinary standby, along with fresh baguettes and cheap red wine from Yugoslavia. Jonathan regaled […]

Claude Monet. Waterloo Bridge, Gray Day. 1906. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
See the series: Monet at the National Gallery of Art.

First she sexed up the ratings of a French President who’s been caricatured as a “Corsican hoodlum.” Now she’s pumping a much-needed glamor infusion into the House of Windsor, and the House of Dior is cashing in on the coup. What’s next? Carla Bruni might just revive the pillbox hat as a fetish object. (Bob […]

Set 1: Evelyn Glennie. A Little Prayer. Fred Frith joins her on this improvisation, which was recorded in an old sugar factory in Dormagen, Germany. The clip is excerpted from the documentary Touch The Sound by Thomas Riedelsheimer. The session led to the CD The Sugar Factory (Tzadik).
It makes complete sense, literally, that […]

The subject of Marlee Matlin’s dancing came up in the comment thread for The ‘Otherly-Abled’ Have Affairs, Too. I suggested that anyone curious about deafness and dancing should explore the music of Scottish percussionist and composer Evelyn Glennie. There are a number of performance videos on the net, and I may drop previous plans for […]

New York Gov. David Paterson discusses his marital infidelities at a news conference on Tuesday as his wife Michelle Paterson looks on. [Source: NYT]
A day after I gushed that I could hitch my wagon to this guy’s star, he and his wife held a news conference where they confessed to cheating on each other. It […]

Listening to a radio story about graphic novels seems like a stretch, but hey, it’s the age of new media. Such sensory shape-shifting is a boon to the blind flaneur’s soul. Screenwriter John Ridley, also a graphic novelist, approaches the challenge by talking with three other writers who are experimenting with the new form. […]

This week’s On The Street photo essay includes an audio narration by Bill Cunningham. He talks about some stunning spring shoes that caught his eyes. The photographer sounds almost avuncular. Who wouldn’t want him to snap her picture? And he swears it’s all in a day’s work — no evening wear here. “These women […]

Robert H. Whitmore. Licking Valley. 1919. Dayton Art Institute.
Bob Whitmore’s Licking Valley painting graced the cover of the Feb. 27 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, which published a brief biographical essay about the artist (JAMA. 2008;299(8):877).
I had the privilege to know Bob Whitmore at the end of his long, creative […]