Dreamers Rise

Scenes from the material world, November 2019.

Lying awake before dawn, hearing the faint scratching of rain on the gutters, waiting for the first pale light of a winter morning to stretc...

If I lived in Japan maybe I'd climb Mt. Fuji, but since I don't I settle for Turkey Mountain, a bump of gneiss that soars to an elev...

Joseph Conrad: Razumov had been admitted twice to that suite of several small dark rooms on the top floor: dusty window-panes, litter of all...

Marian Yule, the daughter and amanuensis of a London literary critic, contemplates her fate in the famous reading room of the British Museu...

On this rainy October morning, a reminder that the work of transforming dead matter into life (and vice versa) never stops.

Tomorrow's All We've Got by Amy Rigby From songwriter-musician-bookseller-writer Amy Rigby, one track from a collection of old demos...

I think this is what is called character development. Newlywed Cesca (Ann Dvorak) romps through a disturbingly peppy rendition of the most g...

I found this Canadian edition of Josef Škvorecký's novel about his countryman Antonín Dvořák one afternoon in Kingston, Ontario, and rea...

He arrived knowing nothing of the city and no one there. Cities in general were mysteries to him, this one, which he had no ties to, most of...

There aren't so many reasons to note this day (or opportunities to play this song) that one can afford to let the convergence go unobse...

Musician and songwriter Peter Case has an ambitious two-record project in the works, and is looking for financial support to put him over ...

Four years ago I posted the above image, dated 1887, of a young French woman named Alexandra Marie Fulton de Lipowski. Thanks to a message ...

The larger the scale, the more predictable the world is. The planets and stars move on determined courses, the earth revolves, day becomes ...

Because summer means going to the beach, and going to the beach means gulls.

Until relatively recently, the availability of foreign-language reading material in the US was a bit hit-or-miss, unless you happened to liv...

The writer Charles Simmons, who died two years ago, wrote a half-dozen novels, of which I've read only two. As far as I know he never p...

It's very difficult, at least for me, to make out the long inscription on this Real Photo postcard, but the language is apparently Germ...

Sally Mann: At its most accomplished, photographic portraiture approaches the eloquence of oil painting in portraying human character, but w...

A Mr. Warner, photographer, on reading an account of Emma Jackson in St. Giles's, addressed a letter to Detective Officer James F. Thomp...