If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in ![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
"Brendan, this is what the world looks like all the time to me. Just a little fog. It’s a fine day for boating on the Great Lakes.” Without missing a stroke he turned to dart a skeptical glance at me. Brendan the Navigator. When we named him I didn’t tell his mother everything the legendary Irish name implied. But I imagined him taking on the role of navigator for me. Growing up with Coastal Survey charts and tales of Great Lakes shipwrecks, he came to know Superior as another home. He never doubted the wisdom of canoeing there with a father who was half blind. 
![Charlotte Casiraghi in a red dress. [Source: Stylophile]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/02/charlotte_casiraghi_red_dress.jpg "Charlotte Casiraghi in a red dress. [Source: Stylophile]")
When I figured out who Charlotte Casiraghi was, I realized that I once sent a poem to her mother. 
The legendary Kiki of Montparnasse posed for Man Ray’s 
![Eugène Delacroix. Liberty Leading the People. 1830. Louvre, Paris. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/05/delacroix_liberty_1830_2.jpg "Eugène Delacroix. Liberty Leading the People. 1830. Louvre, Paris. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]]")
The stalwart, raucous chickadees at my bird feeder this morning reminded me of Emily Dickinson’s poem. Let it be my blessing as one year ends and another begins.
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must [...]
Entries from December 2008
‘Hope is the thing with feathers’
1
December 31, 2023 at 9:06am
by Mark Willis
Rusalka’s Song to the Moon
0
December 30, 2023 at 8:14pm
by Mark Willis
Rusalka by Russian artist Konstantin Vasiliev, 1968. [Source: Wikipedia]
Ms. Modigliani found this image while searching for clips of the Song to the Moon aria from Dvo?ák’s Rusalka. According to Wikipedia:
In Slavic mythology, a rusalka (plural:rusalki) was a female ghost, water nymph, succubus or mermaid-like demon that dwelled in a waterway.
According to most traditions, the rusalki [...]
Art · Ms. Modigliani Add Your Comment
Window-Shopping on Fifth Avenue
0
December 28, 2023 at 9:49am
by Mark Willis
Bill Cunningham’s On the Street photo essay surveys holiday window displays on Fifth Avenue. He says he’s never seen the likes of these opulent scenes in his 80 years, and worries that with the financial downturn, their likes may never come again.
Julius Block at the Dawn of Recorded Music
0
December 26, 2023 at 7:33pm
by Mark Willis
NPR Music:
John Maltese and his father spent years tracking down the wax cylinders recorded in the 1890s by businessman Julius Block. Maltese finally found them in St. Petersburg, Russia, and traveled there with record producer Ward Marston. The fruit of the long, careful process of restoring the recordings, The Dawn of Recording, is available [...]
Playing by Ear Add Your Comment
Mahalia’s Gift: “Go Tell It On the Mountain”
1
December 23, 2023 at 8:57am
by Mark Willis
Mahalia Jackson soars in a performance photograpghed by Lee Friedlander. [Source: NPR]
Once upon a time, I ran as fast as I could to get away from Holiday Muzak at the shopping mall. One of my earliest newspaper columns railed against the psychotropic effects of hearing “Jingle Bell Rock” twenty times a day. I risk convulsions [...]
Art · Bob Willis · Café Mouffe · Flaneur's Gallery · Playing by Ear · fashionista · memoir · poetry · politics Add Your Comment
Luciano Pavarotti & My Mothers Still Small Voice
0
December 21, 2023 at 9:07am
by Mark Willis
I walked to the nursing home with a boom box in my back pack and a sprig of dried lavender in my pocket. That is what I could give my mother on what turned out to be her last Christmas.
At the end of her life, she was demented and paralyzed and nourished with a gastric [...]
The Multiple Meanings of Orwellian Xmas
0
December 20, 2023 at 9:12am
by Mark Willis
Nominal social obligation toolk me to a holiday office party at a restaurant in one of those nouveau shopping malls built to resemble a faux urban center. The blind flaneur appreciates the fact that these places have storefronts and sidewalks but is not deceived by the surrounding sea of desultory parking lots. The place felt [...]