Browsing Archive: September, 2010
Posted by Roger Boylan on Wednesday, September 29, 2010,
Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht,
Dann bin ich um den Schlaf gebracht,
Ich kann nicht mehr die Augen schließen,
Und meine heißen Tränen fließen.
Die Jahre kommen und vergehn!
Seit ich die Mutter nicht gesehn,
Zwölf Jahre sind schon hingegangen;
Es wächst mein Sehnen und Verlangen.
Mein Sehnen und Verlangen wächst.
Die alte Frau hat mich behext.
Ich denke immer an die alte,
Die alte Frau, die Gott erhalte!
If I think of Germany in the night,
I am jolted from my sleep,
I can no longer clo... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Tuesday, September 28, 2010,
No, the Snug hasn't closed, nor will it. But posts will continue to be erratic because I'm busy these days a) publishing my novel The Adorations elsewhere, with no help from traditional publishers; b) wrapping up the editorial job I've been told will go away by year's end; c) contemplating the prospect of seeking further employment; and d) embarking on the last leg of Ohiowa Impromptu, a novel (like The Adorations) for the ages. Oh yes, and adding finishing touches to pieces that will soon be... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Friday, September 24, 2010,
A perfect Art Deco composition: the airship Columbia, a Goodyear blimp, sailing past the Empire State Building. Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Thursday, September 23, 2010,
Remarkable woman, remarkable man: Antonina Pirozhkova, eminent Russian civil engineer and widow of the great Russian Jewish playwright and short-story writer Isaac Babel, has died at age 101. So much life accorded to her; so little to him: He was executed at age 45 by Stalin's OGPU (KGB under another name) in 1940, falsely accused of spying for the French. (In the photo above, they are shown together in 1936.) Even at the end, Babel had a devil-may-care attitude most suitable for a Russian wr... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Tuesday, September 21, 2010,
Shock! Horror! It is alleged by reputable sources, such as The Guardian, that the Prime Minister, or Taoiseach, of Ireland, His Excellency Brian Cowen, was, um, flewtered/squiffy/stinko when interviewed on an Irish radio program the day after attending an all-night bash at a hotel in Galway. Well, the very idea. An Irish politician drinking? Through the night? Not upholding the standard of rectitude in all things? Gosh. Or rather, shades of Charles Haughey, who was Taoiseach when I last lived... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Monday, September 20, 2010,
Yes, I know I'm getting a little too automotive, what with two successive postings featuring cars; I hope the anti-materialistic cultural cognoscenti out there will forgive me. But it's Jaguar's 75th birthday, and the Daily Telegraph has chosen to honor the occasion with some fine autoportraits. The one above, incidentally, is of my own mechanical cat ('04 S-Type). Long may she roll.So far, Indian ownership has been a boon for Jaguar, although as a hidebound old codger, I wish they'd kept one... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Friday, September 17, 2010,
Clark Gable and his 1955 Jaguar XK120. Steve McQueen's an also-ran. Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Thursday, September 16, 2010,
For those of us increasingly fed up with the slovenly moral relativism of the cognoscenti, John Derbyshire is, as always, a voice of reason, most recently about the recent flap over the Koran that wasn't burned: "I know a lot of Christians, but I'm pretty sure not one of them would be out in the streets of New York protesting if Reuters reported that some mosque in Baluchistan was having a burn-the-Bible day."We may not deserve an Edmund Burke (shown above), but we've damned nearly got one in... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Tuesday, September 14, 2010,
“All of a sudden, we’ve got this voluntary prohibition that has to do with health and fitness. I’m not really in favor of health and fitness.”Barbara Holland, martini-loving woman writer, made it to 77 before paying the wages of sin.. Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Saturday, September 11, 2010,
Nine years ago, on Tuesday, September 11, I was settling myself into my cubicle at Holt, Rinehart, and Winston in Austin for another day's monotony. I was browsing the news websites when...
And I remembered how the twin towers were the first sight to greet my eyes every day from the lving room window of my 14th Street apartment in New York City,and the last sight every night, for 10 years. So absolute was their aspect of permanence that I adapted the old Roman expression "when the Colosseum fa... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Friday, September 10, 2010,
Fifty-one years after he took over from the unlovely puppet Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro, Cuba's 84-year-old caudillo-for-life and one-time firebrand of world revolution, is beginning to talk sense. The Cuban model is not only not much use for other countries, he says; it doesn't even work for Cuba. The Missile Crisis of 1962? (Hard to believe that he's still around when his then-contemporaries Kennedy and Khruschev belong to a past that seems almost as remote as that of, say, Louis XIV, o... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Friday, September 10, 2010,
I've been converted to the cult of the big pickup truck after a road trip at the wheel of a 2010 Toyota Tundra. Read my road test of this beauty here. Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Tuesday, September 7, 2010,
From Ohiowa Impromptu: Marina learned from the Nutlanders
about odd weekend events called "yard sales," or "garage
sales," at which American families flung open their front doors and
garages and divested themselves for a price of unwanted belongings that would
have furnis... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Thursday, September 2, 2010,
From Ohiowa Impromptu: Truth to tell,
Marina was proud of her yagoditsy and
proud of being Russian, too. But she knew her country was doomed, so she busied
herself with the task of building an outpost of Russian civilization here, in
far America (also doomed, but not yet). She hung ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Thursday, September 2, 2010,
Boris Boillon, the French ambassador to Iraq (above), in an interview with Le Figaro, Aug. 31, suggests that things might not be that dire in Iraq, and that W. might not have been totally out to lunch:The tactic of al Qaeda, which aims to put the country in fire and blood, to rekindle the civil war, has failed. The specter of partition in Iraq is behind us. . . . The record has improved since we passed a hundred deaths per day four years ago, to ten deaths per day today. In fact, the trend re... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Wednesday, September 1, 2010,
More encouraging words for us stragglers at the lower end of the cognitive elite, from Charles Simic: Writers
and poets are only noticed in totalitarian regimes. They are either imprisoned
and shot, or they become highly-privileged flunkies of the regime. In
democracies, they are margi... Continue reading ...
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