The highway is alive tonight Where it’s headed everybody knows I’m sitting down here in the campfire light With the ghost of old Tom Joad Bruce Springsteen In the last of our posts commemorating 1968, we pay tribute to author and Nobel Laureate John Steinbeck who died fifty years ago this month. Back in the … Continue reading The last rains came gently – Steinbeck’s dustbowl ballad
You were taken away at dawn. I followed you As one does when a corpse is being removed. Children were crying in the darkened house. A candle flared, illuminating the Mother of God… The cold of an icon was on your lips A death-cold sweat on your brow – I will never forget this; I … Continue reading Ghosts of the Gulag
On this day, 8th October 1908, The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame’s classic children’s book was published. In 1908, Kenneth Grahame retired from his position as secretary of the Bank of England. He moved to Berkshire, where he had lived as a child and spent his time by the River Thames doing much as … Continue reading The Wild Wood and the Wide World
You cannot stop the birds of sadness from passing overhead, but you can sure as hell stop them nesting in your hair. It is late summer in 1806, in the colony of New South Wales. After he loses everything he owns in a disastrous flood, former convict, failed farmer, and all-round no-hoper and ne’er-do-well Martin … Continue reading Martin Sparrow’s Blues
The serpentine storylines of Nathan Hill’s astonishing debut novel The Nix converge on the chaos and carnage of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968, when Hubert Humphrey was selected as candidate to run against Richard Nixon that fall, and Mayor Daley set the city’s finest upon the thousands who had gathered to … Continue reading Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold – 1968 revisited
Winston Churchill defined the fanatic as one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. Celebrated Israel author Amos Oz argues against religious fundamentalism, political cynicism and wishful thinking, reflecting on the rise of fundamentalism, and how, in an increasingly complex world, we take cover in xenophobia, religious fanaticism, and isolationism. He argues … Continue reading Dear Zealots – letters from a divided land
Bethlehem has captured the imagination of the world for centuries – we are culturally and spiritually drawn to this famous Palestinian town, and specifically, to an event that may or may not have happened 2,020 years ago. Many express doubt but we nevertheless embrace the myth and the magic it inspires: the appearance of a … Continue reading O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie…
The horse has been man’s most important companion – forget cats and dogs – and the most durable of historical alliances – against which every other covenant has been fragile and ephemeral – not even our relationship with our gods has shown a comparable degree of stability. Our story resonates with an equine leitmotif – in … Continue reading The Twilight of the Equine Gods
Spring is here, spring is here Life is skittles and life is beer I think the loveliest time of the year Is the spring, I do, don’t you? Course you do But there’s one thing that makes spring complete for me And makes every Sunday a treat for me… Tom Lehrer That music always round … Continue reading The Country Life
In Invisible Republic, his masterful telling of the story behind “The Basement Tapes”, Greil Marcus, quotes Bob Dylan: “Traditional music is based on hexagrams. It comes about from legends, Bibles, plagues, and it revolves around vegetables and death”. And this is precisely the theme of Dylan’s belated Nobel Lecture, a presentation that is in its style, … Continue reading Legends, Bibles, Plagues – Bob Dylan’s Nobel Lecture
In That Howling Infinite 