Before the present age when every consumer is earpodded up and equipped with a private portable movie screen, wrangling over what music to listen to on the car radio and what show to watch on…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
The human ear is defenseless. Unable to keep sound out, it must take in all it hears. The beeswax earplugs Odysseus supplied his crew saved them from the Sirens, even as he self-torturingly enjoyed their…
Mount Nyiragongo’s eruption and earthquake, and the aftershocks that continue to shake the Democratic Republic of Congo remind one that the Christian God of that Christian country—brought to Africa by colonialism—has always been a meteorological,…
Unlike the days following Osama bin Laden’s death on May 2nd, 2011, the tenth anniversary of his killing passed without hoopla in the American Homeland. A decade on from death of America’s arch enemy, no…
Remember going to the library? I miss the reading rooms most—the busy hush of reading and research underway; the reluctance of old pages being turned; the furtive glances at the mysterious materials laid out on…
J.S. Bach’s two musical confrontations with taxes span his career composing and performing cantatas. Nur jedem das Seine (To Each His Own!), BWV 163, dates from 1715, the year after Bach had been promoted from…
I live between a gorge and a graveyard. The gorge just to the south began forming some ten thousand years ago at the end of last Ice Age, and its northern rim is moving inexorably…
Texas loosens, Italy locks down. With the skies mostly still clear and quiet, one can hear the collective champing at the bit before the gates open...