This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, March 24, 2023. All of the seasons of the year have their special charms (yes, even winter), but none engenders my personal excitement like spring. The earth is coming back to life. Trees and flowers are beginning to bud and bloom, and • Read More »
Anyone lucky enough to have been in Paris in the 1930s and to have witnessed a performance by Josephine Baker, the African-American expatriate, would inevitably describe the experience in the same terms. It was mesmerizing. Baker had the ability to create a world on stage into which she could draw an audience, and to make • Read More »
Listen to this story here on LibriVox.org THERE was a brief period during which Father Brown enjoyed, or rather did not enjoy, something like fame. He was a nine days’ wonder in the newspapers; he was even a common topic of controversy in the weekly reviews; his exploits were narrated eagerly and inaccurately in any • Read More »
Old time baseball aficionados like me used to be able to brag that, unlike basketball and football, baseball was not governed by any kind of a time clock. The pace of the game could be fast, or it could be leisurely. That was part of its beauty and charm. We no longer have that to • Read More »
There is good news about libraries from Great Britain. There is also some bad news. And the good news is that during the last year or so when statistics are available, the in person use of libraries in that nation has risen by a whopping 68 percent. The time measured for this statistic was mostly • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, March 17, 2023. Old time baseball aficionados like me used to be able to brag that, unlike basketball and football, baseball was not governed by any kind of a time clock. The pace of the game could be fast, or it could • Read More »
A deal with the devil. It is one of the oldest stories—if not the oldest—in our culture. The concept of “the devil and his due” is deeply embedded in our language and in our thinking. When Christopher Marlowe wrote his play, Dr. Faustus, sometime in the 1590s, he brought to modern life this ancient story • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, March 10, 2023. My efforts at beekeeping in the last few years have been largely unsuccessful (not much honey harvested and hives dying in the fall or winter), so it is time to try a different approach. I have been reading some • Read More »
If you pay attention to these things, you hear a lot these days about “public shaming,” and its subsidiary concept, “body shaming.” These two activities are generally thought to be bad, if not evil. I would agree. Holding people up to public ridicule is, on the whole, not a productive activity in my view. Running • Read More »
Now that the 2023 Super Bowl is dead and buried and the so-called March Madness irritation will end by the end of the month, it is time to turn our minds to the truly important considerations of the coming baseball season. Major League Baseball is imposing several important rule changes this season, and it will • Read More »
Decades before the world had ever heard of the great entomologist and writer E.O. Wilson, Charles Henry Turner was taking a close look at the behavior of insects, particularly ants and bees. Turner’s observations and discoveries about the social instincts and behavior of insects would set the stage for much of the scientific exploration • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, March 3, 2023. If you pay attention to these things, you hear a lot these days about “public shaming,” and its subsidiary concept, “body shaming.” These two activities are generally thought to be bad, if not evil. I would agree. Holding people • Read More »
When Prince Harry’s ghost-written autobiography Spare was released in January, it set sales records of 3.2 million copies sold in the first week. Pretty good for a guy who isn’t all that interested in books and who isn’t sure about who William Faulkner is. Most of the credit for the book’s overall readability is given • Read More »
Sitting. It’s one of the most common—and least researched—of all human activities. One thing that we’re pretty sure of is that sitting too much is not good for you. Yet, that’s what many of us do. We sit at our jobs, and when we come home, we sit to conduct whatever helps us relax, such • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, February 24, 2023. Attempts to silence writers are as eternal, and as futile, as attempts to ban books themselves. In a couple of recent high-profile instances, we have seen author Salman Rushdie physically attacked and Harry Potter creator J. K. Rowling become • Read More »
A good part of last week was spent getting my latest book, Women With Words: Female Journalists and Writers, Heads and Tales Volume 2, ready for publication on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other platforms. This is the second compilation of articles and caricatures, many of which originally appeared in this newsletter. (Valuable hint: • Read More »
The reach and influence of Burt Bacharach’s music in the last half of the 20th century was immeasurable and unmatched. Bacharach wrote songs that you could easily hear and listen to. They were songs that expressed feelings that you had felt. They were often open to literary and musical interpretation, and the number of • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, February 17, 2023. Ever since the Super Bowl ended, nearly a week ago, we have been treated to an endless number of stories about what happened during the last few minutes of the game and how a referee’s questionable call might • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,845) on Friday, February 10, 2023. Sadly, attacks on libraries and librarians continue, and recently they have reached my own area. A group from a coalition of churches in my county showed up at a county school board meeting to offer some less-than-friendly instruction to • Read More »
Charles Fancher, a good friend from my college days at the University of Tennessee in the 1960s, has recently had his first novel, Red Clay, accepted for publication by Blackstone Publishing. Here’s the announcement in Publishers Marketplace: Several years ago, when Charles was starting out with his novel, he sent me some of the • Read More »