Browsing Archive: July, 2011
Posted by Roger Boylan on Sunday, July 31, 2011,
August 1st is the Swiss National Holiday. I lived in Switzerland once,long ago, and have missed it ever since. Why won't they let me back in? Why should they? If they let in all the world's riff-raff it wouldn't be half the haven it is. Long live the stubborn Helvetii. Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Monday, July 25, 2011,
Unrecovered from jet lag, I awoke early to dark wet Harry Lime streets outside, and a chilly breeze off the Hungarian steppe. The Balkans begin on the Landstrasse, said Count von Metternich, referring to an eastbound street in Vienna. It feels like they're here.Then a breakfast of meats and cheeses washed down with Viennese espresso. And the first segment of the conference at the Faculty of Philosphical and Cultural Studies, formerly part of the Lying-In Hospital in Habsburg days, and the lec... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Sunday, July 24, 2011,
After 30 hours of air travel from sweltering drought-stricken Austin, where it was (and is) around 100 deg. F., I arrived, grimy and fatigued, in the cool and wet capital of Austria, where the highs won't hit 60 F all week. On the way I passed through Washington and Frankfurt. I'm constantly amazed at the humiliating misery air travel has become. Moreover, I found myself taken aside in Frankfurt by Bundespolizei and interrogated, briefly but throughly, on my rasion d'etre. I can't help it" be... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Friday, July 22, 2011,
I recently had a birthday. I'm now older than the presidents of Russia, France, Brazil, Mexico, and the United States, and the prime ministers of Spain, Japan, the UK, Ireland, Israel, and Canada. Oh, and the Chancellor of Germany.Thank goodness for the gerontocrats of China, India, and Italy. Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Thursday, July 14, 2011,
It's 222 years since that ragtag mob invaded the Bastille and seized its entire population of four forgers, two lunatics, and one deviant aristocrat (there had been two, but the Marquis de Sade had been transferred elsewhere ten days previously). The unfortunate Governor, the Comte De Launay, was beaten to death and his head was mounted on a pike, in traditional peasant-insurrectionist style. Things calmed down for awhile, then got worse, and before you could say "Robespierre," there he was, ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Wednesday, July 13, 2011,
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky--try saying that after you've had a couple. Actually, the man himself (1887-1950), a Ukrainian-Polish contributor to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and author of ingenious plays and short stories, was well-known for regular consumption of more than a couple, and you couldn't blame him. He was a great writer utterly neglected in his day, known, he said, only "for being unknown." Hardly any of his work was published in his lifetime, thanks to bad timing re: the tides of ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Friday, July 8, 2011,
As a final homage to the late Peter Falk, here's a sketch he did of himself as Columbo, demonstrating talents that went beyond the acting sphere. Wotta guy. Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Tuesday, July 5, 2011,
The bloodless obituary put out by the Eurocrats in Brussels for Otto von Habsburg, who died yesterday at 98, enraged the Daily Mail correspondent, whose ire I share: "So what did the officials at the European Parliament do to mark the death of this living link with historic Europe? They put out a statement announcing 'the death of former MEP Mr Otto Von Hapsburg [sic] on 4 July 2011.' Yes, unfortunately this heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire was rather a pan-European; but... Continue reading ...
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