Words and Music

Guest Blogger Dept. : What better way to finish the year than with some holiday reflections by Robert Benchley? He describes the following p...

From the Food Vault Dept. : Last New Year’s Eve, I sought a restaurant to which to retreat after a performance I give in Albany. The place h...

From the Classical Vault Dept .: Pianist Alicia de Larrocha switched record labels in the late 1980s, and embarked on a project with her new...

Follow-Up Visit Dept.: As part of my research while writing a review of Gary Kleppel's book The Emergent Agriculture , I visited his far...

WHAT’S MOST IRONIC about Gary Kleppel’s plea for sustainable agriculture is that he’s merely asking us to do what was done for thousands of ...

Guest Blogger Dept . It hardly seems like twenty years since we witnessed a turn of the century, making the turn of a century before that se...

From the Vault Dept. : Berkshire Opera was founded by Rex Hearn in 1985; with a few changes of venue, the company lasted until 2008. It was ...

From the Food Vault Dept .: And where did I dine back I went to that Penn & Teller show I wrote about earlier ? The same issue of Metrol...

From the Vault Dept. : In my ongoing effort to clear out desk and filing-cabinet drawers, I’ve been turning old paperwork into PDFs and old ...

This year's Thanksgiving menu returns us to the realm of Caribbean cuisine, with some fanciful additions and alterations. The menu is be...

I’VE JUST HEARD an incredibly wonderful, enjoyable Christmas album, and if you’re as weary as I am of the shopping-mall treacle that annuall...

From the Theatrical Vault Dept. : Here’s one of the couple of dozen pieces I wrote for the the short-lived The Alt, a mis-managed magazine ...

From the Tech Vault Dept. : Here’s another outdated tech piece from my distant past, written for Metroland in 2000, and only fleetingly appl...

THERE’S A PLAINTIVE QUALITY to the Florence Reece song “Which Side Are You On?” that’s also touched with purpose – which isn’t surprising, c...

THERE’S A FEELING OF LUSH LAWNS and expensive orthodonture. Inside the house hang abstract art, a motif that carries onto the floor. Books a...

From the Vault Dept .: Lena Spencer died October 23, 1989, nearly thirty years after founding Saratoga’s Caffè Lena , and Utah Phillips (who...

Guest Blogger Dept. : Mark Twain’s keen sense of mankind accommodated a semblance of good behavior, but a flurry of books offering detailed ...

From the Video Vault Dept. : It’s been gratifying to see that the birth of the DVD inspired many an actual treasure to be released on that f...

From the Classical Vault Dept .: The Tokyo String Quartet was founded in 1969 by students who had been schooled in Tokyo before continuing t...

From the Culinary Vault Dept .: Monday’s post, revisiting my 2008 DiCarlo’s review , mentioned McGeary’s Irish Pub, my 2010 review of which,...