Dreamers Rise

UNDERGROUND RIVERS

Friday, January 21, 2022

Urban legend

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Henry Mayhew, the great chronicler of 19th-century London's working poor, collected the following tale in the course of an interview wit...
Monday, January 17, 2022

John the Bear

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The above illustration by the late French artist Jean-Claude Pertuzé is from a version of a folktale known in French as "Jean de l'...
Saturday, January 15, 2022

Hermes

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Let some traveller, on seeing Hermes of Commagene, aged sixteen years, sheltered in the tomb by fate, call out: I give you my greetings, l...
3 comments:
Thursday, December 16, 2021

The Whales of the Dead

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Stepan Krasheninnikov: The Kamchadals regard Mount Kamchatka as the dwelling place of the dead; they say that when it emits flames, it means...
Monday, December 13, 2021

Buffon's Ounce, the lonza leggera, and The Long Walk

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Slawomir Rawicz was a Polish military officer in World War II who in the 1950s dictated to a ghost-writer a stirring account of how he and s...
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Wednesday, December 08, 2021

Purgatorio

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I'm walking in the woods at night in the company of Willie McTell. I see three deer standing a few yards away; somehow, in spite of his ...
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Monday, December 06, 2021

Monday afternoon

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I stepped into a little café that was simply a small room with a counter in the rear and a table on either side of the door. The woman behin...
1 comment:
Saturday, December 04, 2021

Ambition (II)

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Edward Gibbon: Diocletian, who, from a servile origin, had raised himself to the throne, passed the nine last years of his life in a priva...
Saturday, November 27, 2021

A Few "Regrets"

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I pulled out this slender letterpress chapbook the other day when I was looking for something else. I had forgotten that I owned it. The cov...
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Sunday, October 31, 2021

Notebook: Home Fires

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Sir James George Frazer: Not only among the Celts but throughout Europe, Hallowe’en, the night which marks the transition from autumn to...
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Thursday, October 28, 2021

The Old Country

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It's a frightening thought that I've reached an age where there are now books that I first read almost fifty years ago, and I'm...
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Thursday, October 21, 2021

Visitors

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A posh tour bus pulls up outside our house and discharges a group of North Koreans and American supporters, who barge in through our front d...
1 comment:
Monday, October 04, 2021

Calais

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Charles Dickens: The passengers were landing from the packet on the pier at Calais. A low-lying place and a low-spirited place Calais wa...
Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Report of the Committee on Agriculture (II)

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Most of this year's butternut squash crop has now been harvested. I grew two types, both of which are hybrids. The tan ones shown above ...
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Monday, September 13, 2021

Ostalgia

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This novel set in a fictitious Eastern European country was published in 1983, that is, the year after the death of Leonid Brezhnev, but sup...
Saturday, September 04, 2021

The Lowest of the Low

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A Josef Škvorecký novella set in wartime Czechoslovakia led me to this droll 1985 BBC documentary about the bass saxophone and its players,...
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Thursday, September 02, 2021

"The nastiest Christian I've ever met"

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And some books are just not meant for one ... I picked up The Idiot because I was more or less housebound for a few days and tired of dippi...
Monday, August 23, 2021

Red in Tooth and Claw

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Our dog came upon this large Chinese praying mantis in our yard this morning in incriminating circumstances. The mantis was on the ground di...
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Friday, August 13, 2021

Nancy Griffith 1953-2021

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The gifted songwriter and performer Nanci Griffith has died at the age of 68. Here she is in her prime, with a lovely live version of one of...
Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Ambition

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One day I hope to retire to grow the vegetable marrows, but until then I have only the window box. — Hercule Poirot Il faut cultiver not...
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