The two Russian guys were in their 40s and both spoke perfect English, but other than that they were the odd couple. Gennady Alferenko was lithe, charming, funny and energetic. He had come to America…
Posts published in “Essays”
The evening light was a sickly sepia. The haze from the wildfires gave the clapboard houses on the steep hillside above one of Ithaca’s many gorges a simultaneously antique and apocalyptic cast. Down below in…
If you are thinking of traveling abroad it would be wise to read the following, or better yet write it down. Your bank account will thank you. The tribal elders have trod these paths before,…
Has anyone figured out why we are so wealthy but so miserable? When I speak of We I mean us Americans, and when I speak of Wealthy I mean everyone from the bottom to the…
The fall of ‘66 and I was attending Douglass, the women’s college of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, wearing Bass Wejuuns penny loafers, preppy v-neck tennis sweaters and ironing my hair in preparation…
In Christian art across the centuries, angels have been depicted playing musical instruments: harps, trumpets, and organs. But how is it possible for immaterial beings to hold objects of wood, metal, string and wire? Theologians…
Across most of its four-hundred-year history, opera has been predominantly an urban pursuit. It flourished in Italian cities—Florence, Mantua, Venice, Naples—then was exported to the rest of Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries and…
My dear Trophy of a wife declared we needed to talk, and when she said it her teeth were gritted and her tone was flat. Ominous. I did a quick and guilty fact-check of some…