you do not have to be good

October 5th, 2008

This morning, in the biography of William James that I’ve been making my way through at the pace of about two paragraphs a day for the past year, he described the New England autumnof 1908 as “heartbreaking in its sentimentality.” And indeed, even one hundred years of disastrous human history and climate change later, the foliage is so spectacular, it’s almost maudlin. Here’s the moose yesterday, carrying Mt. Abe on her shoulders.

And here’s a movie I made this afternoon while I was yanking up roots from the garden and flocks of wild geese honked by overhead.

Check out my pal Phranc’s daily variety show on YouTube. If Mister Rogers and Peewee Herman gave birth to a l’il bulldagger, this is what she’d be like.

Dictionopolis

October 1st, 2008

Yesterday I paid a visit to my publisher, Houghton Mifflin, in Boston, and got to meet these two guys who work on the American Heritage Dictionary. Read the rest of this entry »

just in time for the depression!

September 18th, 2008

Am I imagining it, or does there seem to be a lot of nostalgia lately for New Deal programs? A friend just sent me this beautiful postcard of a poster created for the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. There was a show on tv the other night interviewing old guys who’d been part of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

And today State By State: A Panoramic Portrait of America is released. This is an anthology Read the rest of this entry »