September 2023
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(If I'm going to assume people know who wrote Dune, I should do no less for this much greater novel.) I think now that the version of Great Expectations which I read in the ninth grade must have been abridged, as it appeared in our literature textbook along with a number of short stories and poems,…
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Dylan has a song, released on the first of the outtakes collections falsely called "bootlegs" (it's not a bootleg if it's released by the record company), called "Foot of Pride." It was recorded for the Infidels album but not used, thereby making the album weaker than it might have been. To me Infidels is one of…
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Usually when I write about books I put the author's name in the title of the post along with the title of the book. But in a few cases it seems superfluous. Doesn't everybody know that Frank Herbert wrote Dune? Or is the fact that I think so only a manifestation of my own insularity? Anyway,…
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You served me faithfully for many years. This picture was taken about a year ago, when we were about to move to a new house, and I was trying to get rid of things that really had no reason to go with us. I am one of those people who find it difficult to throw…
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He was a smart businessman who made millions telling y'all it's okay to goof off all the time. That was my wife's observation, and I thought it was too funny to keep to myself. I mean no serious disparagement of Jimmy Buffett. I was oddly saddened when I heard of his death–oddly because I wasn't…
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About halfway through Kurosawa's Ikiru I thought, with a touch of cynicism: This is going to be a story of a staid and gloomy old man facing death, given a new appreciation of life by a vivacious young woman. I wondered if perhaps this was the first film to portray that sort of encounter and…
Light On Dark Water 