A journey back in time
I haven’t been feeling much Fourth of July spirit this weekend for a lot of reasons, including Cape Town’s gray winter weather. So I decided to turn to 1926, when America celebrated its sesquicentennial, hoping to find a more festive scene.* On the magazine covers, there was less celebrating than I expected. The Saturday Evening [ ]
1925 is the best children’s book year ever! Or a total washout! It depends on whether you believe the New York Times, whose anonymous critic tells us in its November 8 holiday children’s book roundup that “never since man began to make books, have there been so many and such beautiful books for young readers,” [ ]
August in Washington, D.C., wound down in a very un-D.C. fashion, with moderate temperatures and low humidity, a far cry from the weather in late July when I went to the DC Open finals.* The women s final, played in the afternoon after a long rain delay, felt like a battle to see which player could [ ]
I realize that it’s unreasonable to sign up for the annual meeting of the International T.S. Eliot Society, followed immediately by the T.S. Eliot International Summer School, and complain that people talk about T.S. Eliot too much. I became a member of the T.S. Eliot community in a roundabout way, though, my lifelong but low-key [ ]
This year, a lot of Americans will be celebrating Independence Day in a minor key. I m one of them. I m spending our country s anniversary in COVID isolation at Trinity College, Dublin, a set of circumstances not conducive to riotous celebration even at the best of times. I felt like I should mark the day somehow, [ ]
I grew up with the New Yorker. My family had a subscription. We had a huge cartoon collection that I browsed through constantly. My high school English teacher explained the proper way to read the magazine: front to back, skipping the cartoons and ads, then back to front, reading them. I read books like James [ ]
Belated happy New Year, everyone, and welcome to the (can it be?) eighth year of My Life 100 Years Ago.* This year s J.C. Leyendecker New Year s baby apparently just registered his new car and immediately has to repair it, which I gather is par for the course for ca. 1925 vehicles. Cars can be fun, [ ]
Welcome to the sixth annual children’s books holiday shopping guide! I’ve just arrived in Cape Town from Washington, D.C., as I do at this time every year.* This year, determined to avoid a repetition of last year’s kind of pathetic effort, I got an earlier start. The problem was, I couldn’t stop myself from reading [ ]
I recently went on on a trip from Cape Town to Washington, D.C., Seattle, North Cascades National Park, Seattle again, Denver, D.C. again, and then back home to Cape Town, all in three weeks. It was wonderful, but it was too much: too many airports, too many suitcases, too many weird bathroom setups. (Well, two, [ ]
Happy 2024, everyone! I don’t know if there’s some symbolism behind this year’s J.C. Leyendecker New Year’s baby that I’m missing, or if it’s just a baby knight riding a mechanical horse and using a feather as a lance. Any insights would be welcomed. Elsewhere, Life waxes whimsical, a skating duo rings in the new [ ]