The Burrow

Sitting at the Author's Table at today's Literary and Prologue Society of the Southwest's luncheon, I found the answer to a question and some food for thought. Over my strawberry shortcake dessert, I listened to Laila Lalami, author of The Moor's Account, tell us that we are all Moors.   I've always wondered if Othello was an Arab Negro , as is her main character, or if he was of a more Semitic cast.  If Ms Lalami is correct, he's both of them and all of them and each of them. I'm comfortable with that conclusion.  It's nice that someone else is thinking about it, too. Her historical novel tells the tale of the first non-European explorer/invader/conqueror of the New World. How is it that I am 63 years old and this is the first I am hearing about him?  His story, though short on details, certainly deserves mention. I flashed to Big Cuter's 9th grade social studies text, Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States , and my son...

That was a very cool Subject in an email I sent to an old friend this morning.  Very cool, indeed. It was true, as my email went on, that I was eating lunch with her. The Literary Society of the Southwest, my favorite organization with the most pretentious name, hosted The Interestings 's author at our first luncheon of the year. Scarlet, newly arrived from New York City (Murray Hill, to be precise), and my guest for the afternoon, said that she was a front row kind of girl , and since I am, too, we took two seats at the author's table.  The author walked in, alone, pinning her name tag to her outfit, saying "Hi, I'm Meg," as she distributed herself and her materials into and around her chair.  "Yes, you are," I replied, inanely, but she smiled and we all introduced ourselves and we chatted, just the way women all over America are chatting today.  I wondered which town on Long Island she ascribed to Jules; it reminded me of mine, Oceanside, but n...

To be in New York on a beautiful day is to feel razor-close to being in love.  Trees flower into brilliant clouds that drape across the parks, plumes of smoke and steam rise into the blue or curl away on the wind, and disparate actions each the object of intense concentration run together in a fume of color, motion and sound, with the charm of a first dance or a first kiss.   Isn't that wonderful?  Don't you smell it and taste it feel it in your bones?  I do. Mark Helprin paints pictures infused with love and an up;-close and personal attachment to the fiber of the city.  He's in love with Manhattan, from the Staten Island Ferry all the way to Central Park.  He knows what it looks like as you approach from Long Island,  driving past the early commuter trains with sleeping passengers leaning against the windows rumbl(ing) west to a city sleeping in gray. I've been that sleeping passenger, nestled next to my father. I'd felt the same frisson of en...