Thanksgiving was born of war: first, colonial conquest masquerading as concord, then a means to bind the nation in the midst of the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation on October 3rd, 1863,…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
Amidst reports that the red-hot Berlin property market is cooling off (literally so, given the steep rise in energy prices) comes a new product placement fantasy that advertises upscale apartments in the German capital —…
Bainbridge Island is in the Puget Sound a 30-minute ferry ride from Seattle. These ferries are not quaint little crafts, but monster vessels that can hold more than 2,000 passengers and are often crammed to…
Ithaca, New York — After spending three weeks in Seattle, smoke-choked from the Bolt Creek Fire burning north of the city, I returned to Upstate New York. Here the skies were blue and the foliage…
Most tools spend far more time in the toolbox than in the hands of the craftsman. Likewise, most musical instruments are silent not sounding, seen (or hidden in their cases) not heard. This relationship between…
Since its birth as a distinct category Classical Music has been allied with War. The orchestra as a European institution came into existence in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries alongside the formation of standing armies.…
(Warning: I’m really not sure if this review is one big spoiler. Any movie with a central reveal risks its own spoilation, especially when the secret will be divined during the screening by some, maybe…
It was all about the Queen until it wasn’t. And it was precisely at that point that Charles didn’t sing along. When it came time for “God Save the King” at the end of his…
“Play it again, Sam,” is not the actual line and it is not uttered by Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Ingrid Bergman is the one who tells the piano player, “Play It, Sam.” The tune she’s…