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A Summer Idyll

From the October 2013 Print Edition

We’re superannuated now, no doubt. Impossible to overlook the facts: age blotches skin, puts muscle tone to rout, winnows our hair, and gives us cataracts. Pat’s doctors rule. No whisky, gin, or wine; he should not take long flights nor go abroad; he eats rat-poison pills (hardly benign). These . . . . Continue Reading »

At Sea

From the October 2012 Print Edition

We stream on color: blue, aquamarine, dove grey. To look straight down gives vertigo, but farther out the surface seems serene, both concentration and reflective flow. Horizons offer us expanse”confine us, also. Every wavelet, though unique, resembles all. The latitudes decline; there’s almost . . . . Continue Reading »

At the Ballet

From the April 2011 Print Edition

A bold conception, said to be first-class, with varied styles of gesture, steps, and play, plus music, avant-garde, by Philip Glass” I’m speaking of a Twyla Tharp ballet. The scoring calls for strings, flute, lots of brass, and electronic noises. All convey remarkable monotony, alas. The chords . . . . Continue Reading »

Yellow-Crowned Night Heron

From the October 2009 Print Edition

He’s not alone”blue herons like to feed here, egrets, mallards, ducks of lesser fame; but his is an especially fine breed” bold head with yellow crown, a stately name. He stalks by night”and, happily for us, at twilight too, along the bayou’s verge, immobile nearly, fishing without fuss, . . . . Continue Reading »

Saint-Séverin, II

From the Aug/Sept 2008 Print Edition

With Notre-Dame, the Sacré-Coeur, and all the rest, obscure or famous”Trinity, Saint-Julian-the-Poor, Saint-Roch, Saint-Paul” it’s just another Paris church to see. For we have come too late, I think”the call to holiness will miss this century; in recent years there’s been another Fall, . . . . Continue Reading »