Category: historical value
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75 years of “funny pictures”
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“Charles M. Schulz was an innovative genius, creating a fantasy world that connected to kids as well as adults and all based on powerful iconic characters who express deep feelings of loneliness and resentment and despair. The feeling that everything is against us. The craving for love. An enormous earnestness…
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The Spectre of Book Banning
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I remember watching reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show on television when I was younger and thinking how silly it was to show Rob and Laura Petrie sleeping in twin beds. Clearly they’d had sex in order to have their son Ritchie, but the show was produced while the…
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To borrow someone else’s tears
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When my hubby and I planned a visit to New Orleans a few years ago, a few people we knew asked if we’d be doing the ‘Katrina’ tour through the worst-hit parts of the city, i.e. the 9th ward. We don’t do “disaster tourism”. And by that I mean touring…
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A victory in the freedom-to-read war
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As an author, the news I’ve been watching most regularly from the U.S. is the coverage of book banning in schools and libraries. It may not seem to be the most important topic amid all the chaos around the world, but it’s a powerful symptom of the degradation of freedom,…
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125 Years of the Wizard of Emerald City
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Every holiday season when I was a child, before the advent of video recorders, my family waited for The Wizard of Oz movie to come back on the air. The scarcity and annual tradition created even more enchantment than just the magic of the story itself. That was my…
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Tea and a Mystery: The Great Brownstone Detective
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Saul and I handled the breakfast problem, and for lunch we had cold cuts, including the sturgeon, which had been passed as edible, two bottles of champagne, and five kinds of cheese. The Doorbell Rang (A Nero Wolfe Mystery Book 41) If you’re going to play hermit for a day…
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Next stop: the Twilight Zone!
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You’re traveling through another dimension – a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Twilight Zone! Fiction writers love to play with the ‘what if’ scenario.…
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The Titanic sinking – new evidence
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“My mother had a premonition from the very word ‘GO.’ She knew there was something to be afraid of and the only thing that she felt strongly about was that to say a ship was unsinkable was flying in the face of God. Those were her words.” Eva Hart, Titanic Survivor…
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Found sequel of Merlin and King Arthur
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There likewise I beheld ExcaliburBefore him at his crowning borne, the swordThat rose from out the bosom of the lake,And Arthur rowed across and took it — richWith jewels, elfin Urim, on the hilt,Bewildering heart and eye — the blade so brightThat men are blinded by it — on one…
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Hitchcock: a Master Storyteller
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“Give them pleasure. The same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.” Alfred Hitchcock There’s a large maple tree in the centre of the circle I live on, and from time to time an unusual number of crows will gather on it early in the morning and…