Prose

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

On New Year's Eve I went, as I have gone for the past decade or more, to St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral here in Seattle to walk the labyrinth. Each last day of the calendar year, the folks at St. Mark's push aside the two central tiers of pews and spread a tarpaulin carpet on the floor imprinted with a replica of the labyrinth that is carved in stone into the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France. Read more about The Blank Page

"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas"

In my little corner of the universe, almost everybody gets a book for Christmas. The following are some of my favorites, all but mine published more than ten years ago.

Barbara Stoner. Yes. I'm suggesting my very own, because I think it's actually a very good first novel. Luckily, most of my readers think so too.