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... )

I learned a few minutes ago that my friend Frank Stern passed away in early September.

On the one hand, he was 92. So intellectually I knew full well that I might not see him again (which, of course, is true of anyone at any age). But he was a very alert and comparatively spry nonagenarian -- I was waltzing with him at New London Assembly during the ( Read more... )

Among the items and services I donated to this year's auction at my church, the offer to read sonnets didn't spark any interest, but the winner of the three-month subscription for homemade bao prevailed over other bidders by their willingness to pay more than $125 for the goods. I delivered carrot and mushroom bao to them last month; today's batch ( Read more... )

- Thomas Peck [NYT obit], responding delightedly to my first selection for my Grant Park Symphony Chorus audition


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Subject line = quote from stellaandbow's Instagram.

At Manhattan's Central Synagogue, senior rabbi Angela Buchdahl (with backing clergy) performed Cohen's "Hallelujah" in tribute:

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Cedille Records' statement includes a beautiful portrait by Constance Beaty. Earlier this month, I received a Soirée Cedille gift bag. It included recipe cards. (The ( Read more... )

My friend Harry was a renowned political scientist: he co-taught a seminar at Harvard with Henry Kissinger for three years, compiled a reading list for Jacqueline Kennedy, and shows up in a lot of bibliographies about U.S. central intelligence. I didn't know any of this, however, until long after he and his wife and I had become friends ( Read more... )

Last summer, when I went to the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival in North Carolina, I was captivated by the beautiful woman turning pages for William Ransom. She had silver hair and wide eyes and she was so engaged with the music -- not histrionically or showtastically or in any way in the way of the performance, yet vibrantly, fully ( Read more... )

Having been decidedly out of the loop, it wasn't until last night when I learned about Stephen M. Wilson's death on May 22, via Linda D. Addison's preface to the 2013 Dwarf Stars compilation. My first exchange with Stephen was back in 2007, his first year of co-editing the anthology.

He was amused to hear that my microcosms honoraria were enough ( Read more... )

...who was also loud and entertainingly opinionated Mike, especially about acting and singing:


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Yesterday evening, the BYM and I learned that Jack Tollett, a friend in Ft. Worth, had passed away earlier in the day. Jack was a darling man who ran the Waltz Across Texas motorcycle rallies for a number of years, raising a fair amount of cash for the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children. He was one of the Chatty Morons (a group of long- ( Read more... )