Thornton Memorial Gardens, Homewood, Illinois; just a few blocks east of the intersection of Ridge Road and Halsted Avenue. Look closely, and you will see the fresh flowers beside the grave of a toddler who has been dead for seventy-six years.

















%I… Read full post »

The release of Star Trek this spring, and my own reconnection with the old Star Trek TV show from the 1960s, prompted me lately to wander the stacks of the local public library, browsing for science fiction books. I almost never read them otherwise. Correction: I never read them. Growing up,… Read full post »

We're going to Iowa!



It had rained the night before.



At the Great Sauk Trail rest area -- so this is still an Illinois bug.



I-80, westbound.



Will it look the same in the 23rd century?



Summer farm fields.



Not too far across the river (there's only one) is this sign.… Read full post »

Mostly, it's flowers, I think ... 

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It's hard to know just what to expect from a "Lake Michigan Shore Wine Festival." One of the ladies on our tour bus summed it up by saying, "...accent on Fest." I imagined the images below, only graced also with colorful tents on the beach sheltering tables and chairs, the tablecloths… Read full post »

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This long letter comes in volume 9 of the Harvard Classics' Five foot shelf of books, first published in 1909. My local public library's own 1965 edition of the collection gets pride of place in an endcap by itself, facing the atrium with its indoor tree and fountain -- very classical… Read full post »

I do bake, as my little hint on the sidebar brags, at Examiner dot com, but some baked goods are so simple and delicious that I'd like to share them as enthusiastically as possible. Besides, discussing Toffee-coffee-chocolate chip bars gives me a chance both to explore the etymology of some… Read full post »

And as Groucho would say, "there's not a thing you can do about it, I've had three of the best doctors in the East!"

All wine books summarize the famed 1855 classification nicely. In that year, Emperor Napoleon III, himself an interesting fellow -- the product of a marriage wherein the first… Read full post »

... to identify this episode. He's deaf, however, so he can't hear your answers anyway. Cats are like that. Read full post »

Okay. I saw the movie. It was good. The time travel/double reality plot struck me as a little bit weak (is Spock's mother dead or isn't she?), and the snow planet monsters a little bit gratuitous. But it was a lot of fun, and the young folks playing the classic characters… Read full post »

(March, 2008)

I have been keeping track of the website "DhimmiWatch" for so long that I forget when or how I first found it. Now I have it bookmarked, just as if I were some sort of computer whiz. Consulting it for the latest news on the incremental spread of supremacist… Read full post »

Tomorrow the new Star Trek movie premieres, the prequel of all prequels, in which the crew of the original series are seen in youth and all played by new young actors. I have seen the trailers on television and I'm concerned. Of course the special effects look good, but that was never… Read full post »

The most savory preparation for ground beef that I have ever come across includes a combination of chopped fresh lemon zest and grated nutmeg, in surprisingly large quantities. The recipe is called "Cannelon of beef" and it appears in Marion Cunningham's 1986 revision of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook. L… Read full post »

By what way is the light parted ... to satisfy the desolate and waste ground,… Read full post »

Once, in a bookstore, I found a copy of the Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, and read on the back jacket flap the statement that Mark Twain considered this his best book. That's a surprise, and in the reading lists they assign and laud, it's clear college professors and other… Read full post »

...but that patch of spring sunshine is really nice. What's the looming shadow? Who cares?   Read full post »

Yesterday would have been a day on which I had lots of news for my uncle Ray. Would you believe it, I always liked to begin things, I got my one and only check from my blog's former advertising network, in the whopping amount of $27 and change, representing the farewell-and-godspeed… Read full post »

Madame du Barry by Stanley Loomis

Madame du Barry was the last of a long line of official royal mistresses of the French kings. She followed Madame de Pompadour into the affections and the lit of King Louis XV, and lived splendidly with him at Versailles for the last six… Read full post »

"The Tholian Web." "The Gamesters of Triskelion." "Amok Time."

Star Trek first aired when I was a toddler, so I missed it then, but I know I grew up with the famed reruns saturating the very air around me, because episode titles like the ones above are as familiar to me as… Read full post »

In my late twenties, after much study and soul searching and what not -- admirable, but my goodness, how earnest we are at certain stages in life, and for heaven's sake I was also busy raising toddlers -- I converted to Judaism. To sum up: while I still believe that Jewish… Read full post »