Dreamers Rise

Lockdown + one month, and counting.

More than fifteen years ago I posted a brief note about the Balkan folk-song "Mečkin Kamen" (The Bear's Rock) and its commemo...

Ireland's TG4 has broadcast a superb documentary about the master uilleann piper Liam O'Flynn, a beloved figure whose modest mann...

Herodotus: The Carthaginians also tell us that they trade with a race of men who live in a part of Libya beyond the Pillars of Hercules. On...

Eduardo Halfon: You won’t write anything about this, my father asked or said, index finger raised, his tone somewhere between a plea and a ...

If you haunt the woods on a regular basis you get to recognize the sounds animals make when they're disturbed by your presence. No n...

Herman Melville: All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swi...

There's a strange calm today, with some cloud cover but no wind, and the street outside has been largely quiet all day. We're keepin...

We've had no face-to-face contact with other people for nine days now, and in New York State, where we live (and which now has the highe...

Richard Thompson, with Suzanne Vega and Loudon Wainwright.

Major disasters, natural or otherwise, have a way of forcing one not only out of one's routines but out of mental patterns as well. They...

From The Epic of Gilgamesh: All his body is matted with hair, he bears long tresses like those of a woman: the hair of his head grows...

John Hay: I think one of the greatest challenges is to watch each bounded living thing with care for its particularity, as far as we can...

Years ago, a friend from grad school and I decided to spend most of one summer rambling around rural New England on foot. Sergei had been bo...

Ambrose Paré: The first is the glory of God. The second, his wrath. The third, too great a quantity of semen. The fourth, too small a qua...

Portrait of David T. Oswell with His Viola, about 1900 William S. Bullard was an amateur photographer who lived in Worcester and Bro...

The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the ...

From The New Yorker: Oswaldo Vidal Martín always wears the same thing to court: a striped overshirt, its wide collar and cuffs woven with ...

Charles Dickens: The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of th...

This brings us back to impeachment. The question it poses is not whether it will be the thing that drives Donald Trump from office or whethe...