Prose

To all of those with their panties in a bunch over the possibility of losing your right to own more Bushmaster-type assault weapons, might I suggest switching to the English warbow. Read more about The Medieval Bushmaster

I recently finished reading through , and it wasn't exactly a romp, let me tell you. I bought it while visiting the homes of American literary figures in New England a few years back. Frost at one of Robert Frost's houses. Dickinson, in Amherst. Longfellow in Cambridge. And Emerson - at his home in Concord. And once having bought, I had to read. Read more about Emerson - A Man Before the Verge

Read more about The Voracious Reader, March, 2013

By leaning over the garden wall, I could scratch with my finger the poultry-house roof. The Upper Garden overlooked the Lower Garden - a warm, confined enclosure reserved for the cultivation of augergines and pimentos - where the smell of tomato leaves mingled in July with that of the apricots ripening on the walls. In the Upper Garden were two twin firs, a walnut-tree whose intolerant shade killed any flowers beneath it, some rose-bushes, a neglected lawn and a dilapidated arbour.

It's always been a conundrum to me that the same people who talk about "power to the people," tend to refer to people who follow a different leader as "sheeple." Has to be the word I love most to hate. I don't interact with enough conservative points of view to know if they use it on a regular basis, but I do hear it all too often from my leftie co-conspirators, and whenever possible I call them on it. Like "Hitler," it's one of those words that tells me I will find little beyond this point to interest me. Read more about Power to the Sheeple

The last round of NPR's 3-Minute-Fiction challenged us to "write a story that revolves around a U.S. president, who can be fictional or real."

The winner's story is very good. My entry didn't even make the "favorite" list. My writer's group didn't get it. But I still kinda like it. I put in 6 presidents. All of whom, I'm glad to report, eventually saw the light.

Andy Sees the Light

Venetophilia: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice. Just finished Judith Martin's wonderful No Vulgar Hotel, which I have been dipping into for several months now. I wish it went on forever. Read more about Venetophilia

I seldom recommend books I haven't read, but on reading this review in the NYT this morning, I can't help but believe that Sonya Sotomayor's will be well worth reading.
Read more about Sight Unseen

There have been a few stories about stories lately. Last weekend - i.e., the weekend before the one we just survived - UP with Chris Hayes featured Oliver Stone talking about , the companion book to the Showtime series of the same name. Read more about What's the Story Here?

It hasn't been often that a book on something like landscape architecture sticks in my mind as solidly as has , by Ian McHarg. Read more about Design With Nature