Some KJ Charles fans were chatting on Discord about Cat Sebastian's Hither, Page, which is set right before Christmas and proved to be what I wanted for a cozy reread at 5 a.m. for Reasons. I really have got to get around to reading Middlemarch some day, because it keeps turning up -- in this book, in Marissa's recs, in a beautiful English country ( Read more... )

Today's subject line comes from this weekend's Live from Here broadcast, in a reading by Lulu Miller, I think around 1 hour and 40 minutes in.

Today's photo is of a jar full of stars -- a birthday gift recently delivered to me:

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There's a funny story in John Richardson's biography, A Life of Picasso. Pablo Picasso was notorious for sucking all the energy out of the people he met. His granddaughter Marina claimed that he squeezed people like one of his tubes of oil paints. You'd have a great time hanging out all day with Picasso, and then you'd go home nervous and ( Read more... )

It is Ewe Day according to the Jacobin calendar (h/t
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August Moon Day 9 prompt: In that moment I felt luminous.

Erm. When this first showed up in my in-box, I thought, Pass. Celestial I am not. When people call me a goddess, it's usually in reaction to a meal I've cooked or some deadline I've met or something I'm wearing with a low neckline or high hem. I've been described as earthy. Grounded. Driven ( Read more... )

In Dan Chiasson's recent NYT feature on Robert Rauschenberg's archives:

In a file cabinet, personal letters from the choreographer Trisha Brown and Al Gore shared folders with a clipped-out New York Times review of a sushi place and a cartoon of a guy taking his pet radish for a walk. The impression is of a life in which making art was, to a ( Read more... )

A June tradition at my church is Music Sunday, and this coming Sunday, at 9 a.m. and at 11 a.m., the choir will be performing a new setting of Darrell Grant's Ruby Bridges Suite.

It is going to be outstanding. Darrell Grant is on piano and keyboard; man can play. Brian Foti on drums -- ditto. Same for the guy on string bass (whose name I didn't ( Read more... )

My life, it does not lack comedy. Not when a dog who has pelted, trotted, leaped, and sauntered through my kitchen door at least 15,000 times still sometimes tries to charge through that door without giving me room to open it. The resulting Marx Brothers routine is the sort of thing that has me laughing and swearing at the same time, as did my ( Read more... )

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Gladys Knight and the Pips (1969)

The Pips had just come up from Atlanta, so they didn't know about Coles and Atkins and they weren't familiar with my choreography for the groups. None of them had seen the Cadillacs, for example. But, Marghuerite [Mays, their promoter] really talked me up; told them how their act lacked class and how I was gonna ( Read more... )

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