December 2020
-
It's been a rough year what with the madman president and the covid pandemic. And also deaths and diseases among my close friends. I have at least ten male friends who've lost their wives after long marriages. Some have bounced back, some will never get over the grief. At the beginning of 2020, I made…
-
Here's a colorized illustration of Ruth Chatterton as Alison Drake in the "pre code" romance Female (1933). Although she's surrounded by a bunch of official looking executives, she runs the show. Miss Drake owns and manages factory that manufactures automobiles. She's in a male preserve — it's not a cosmetic factory or something…
-
"Kith and kin" is an excellent example of a "pairing" — sometimes called a "coordinate pair." A pairing is a linguistic event in which two words join to produce a single meaning. "Kith" has no independent existence nowadays and only exists as an element of the pair. "Kith and kin" means "family." Originally, back then,…
-
Once again, I was lost, this time in a strange city — apparently, I was trying to drive from somewhere down south all the way to Vermont. We park the car and my companion (a guy totally unknown to me, by the way) asks a traffic cop the name of the city at which we've…
-
Friends, relatives, and stray internet pilgrims know that Dr. Metablog, aka Vivian de St. Vrain, etc. is a "replacement child" and has written about it in the blogpost Susan P. and also in brief remarks on Louis Aggasiz, Edward Gibbon, Thornton Wilder, and a guy from the old neighborhood. Now, I'm happy to say, there's…
-
Along with everyone of my generation, I've been worrying about my deteriorating memory. There are these horrible moments. I stand in front of the open refrigerator, wondering what I'm doing there and for what I'm searching. Or I go the market and then forget to bring the groceries in from the car — that sort…