January 2017
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The twins and their older brother came to visit and were playing their favorite new game, "hide the goose." The goose? a two foot tall hollow plastic replica perhaps originally a lawn ornament, now an excellent child's toy. Easy to find. After the hiding game had gone on long enough, and was just starting to become…
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Years ago, I read, in translation of course, a few of Leonardo Sciascia's Sicilian mysteries. Excellent books: The Day of the Owl (Il giorno della civetta — 1961)), Equal Danger (Uguale pericolo –1973), The Challenge (Il contesto–1971). Last week I tried to read one of Sciascia's short stories in its native Italian. A good idea, but quite a…
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On the whole, Italian is a mighty regular language. Of course it has its irregularities, but many fewer than, say, English. Plurals, for example, are largely predictable, but with some curious exceptions. The masculine noun bue (ox or sometimes, by extension, a dolt) seems to call for the plural form *bui, but it's not so; it's buoi. Dio (god), becomes…
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Our new president has an extraordinary ability to believe what he wants to believe, no matter the fact. He mocks a disabled reporter, we all see it with our own eyes, and yet he denies that he did so. He claims that his inauguration was the best attended in history, and then we look at…
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If it happened in Brooklyn, it must have happened in metaphorical or mythological rather than real Brooklyn, because it's not the Brooklyn of my memory. It Happened in Brooklyn is a 1947 musical, I guess you'd have to call it, featuring still skinny Frank Sinatra and womanly Kathryn Grayson, and also Jimmie Durante, who steals the…
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On successive nights, we watched Out of the Past (1947) and Angel Face (1953). Both are, as they say, "gripping" films. In my present situation, "gripping" means that even though the nominal curtain rose on these movies after 9:00 pm, and I was in bed, comfortable, with a full stomach, I was sufficiently gripped that I didn't waver…