For some thirty years now your Musical Patriot has marched in step with a woman named Annette to countless nights in the cinema, opera, and theater. Last Friday was not one of them. Her given…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
An early August road trip heading east from the city of Ithaca across New York State promises calm, pastoral progress. With farming in steep decline the forest has for decades been reclaiming large swaths of…
Among the most alluring of cross-species collaborations is truffle hunting, a pursuit that brings dog—or, more rarely these days, pig—together with man. Women, it seems, are as uncommon as swine in this field. Unearthing culinary…
A quarter century ago Newt Gingrich, elevated to Speaker of the House by the 1994 midterm Republican landslide that followed on Bill Clinton’s first two years in the White House, loved to squawk about defunding…
A six-hour drive last weekend took us from Ithaca in Upstate New York to Oberlin, Ohio—two Blue college towns in a sea of Red. Our purpose was to help a daughter move out of her…
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…
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…