Words and Music

From the Root Cellar Dept .: It’s the time of year to be dining on squash. Meet some unusual varieties, and the preparation ideas that they ...

From the Mailbag Dept .: During my ongoing run as restaurant writer-abouter for Albany’s Metroland Magazine, there have been occasions when ...

From the Vault Dept .: He described himself as a “saloon singer,” but Bobby Short was the classiest exponent of the cabaret world for much o...

. . . because the inaugural entry on this blog was posted a year ago today. I'd have baked cakes for us, but decided instead to celebra...

I JUST SPENT a pleasant but chilly afternoon activating all of my gasoline-powered lawn-care equipment to run their fuel tanks empty, raisin...

Across the U.S.A. Dept. : Written September 11, 1989, this was the seventh installment of my series of articles produced during a cross-coun...

Glen, NY | 24 November 2012 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

From the Bookshelf Dept. : I combat holiday cooking demands by inflicting unfamiliar (to me) recipes on those foolish enough to dine at my h...

Gustatory Excess Dept. : The year my wife and I moved into our rural farmhouse was also the first year of a tradition of stay-at-home Thanks...

From the Computer Vault Dept .: Remember when radon was all the rage, seeping out of our cellars and wreaking radioactive havoc upon us all?...

Guest Blogger: P. G. Wodehouse . In the first decade of the 20th century, P. G. Wodehouse churned out dozens of light-verse pieces for magaz...

From the Bookshelf Dept .: Like so many disenfranchised writers-to-be, I stared at the opening page of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (...

From the Vault Dept. : Once upon a time, there was the brown paper bag. It held groceries, it sucked the fat out of cooling bacon, it served...

Oct. 7, 2012 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

ONE OF THE FUNNIEST set pieces in Jacques Tati’s brilliant movie Mon Oncle takes place on the approach to a county village, where a group o...

From the Holiday Vault Dept .: I’ve been paying tribute to Thanksgiving for many years with Metroland articles; today’s issue features a pie...

Across the U.S.A. Dept .: Return with me to the fire-ravaged Yellowstone National Park that my wife and I visited during our September 1989 ...

Guest Blogger: Stephen Leacock . He was one of Groucho Marx’s favorite writers, and the Canadian scholar and writer Leacock (1869-1944) was ...

From the Vault Dept.: I’ve posted a lot of old reviews and essays, but here’s a bread-and-butter piece that also happens to be the second ar...

10 November 2012 | Glen, NY | Photo by B. A. Nilsson