Words and Music

Scenes from Childhood Dept .: Here's a  re-run which first appeared here in 2009, but was initially published in Metroland Magazine in 1...

JAMES REBANKS SNEAKS UP ON YOU. His prose is colorful and decisive. He’s writing about nature, which encourages lavish description, but he’s...

From the Food Vault Dept. : The restaurant visit described below took place twenty years ago. It turns out that the space we visited has see...

“NORWAY BECAME OIL-RICH in the 1970s, so our view of the country is as a prosperous place on the right side of human rights,” said Darra Gol...

Early in the summer of 2021, I had the pleasure of crafting a new libretto for a one-act opera titled “The Ship’s Captain.” It was originall...

From the Tech Vault Dept. : I had a brief run of tech-oriented articles in Metroland magazine, Albany’s alt-weekly for which I wrote for som...

From the Classical Vault Dept .: I’m not sure if this piece ever actually ran in Metroland – CD reviews, at least from me, wafted in an edit...

From the Fields and Forests Dept .: A few days ago I posted a review of Laura Lengnick’s book Resilient Agriculture . Here’s a follow-up pie...

From the Food Vault Dept .: What’s encouraging is that, thirteen years later, almost all of the winter farmers’ markets detailed below are s...

NEW DEMANDS from a dynamic global economy, continued decline in the quality and availability of natural resources, and the unprecedented cha...

Guest Blogger Dept .: Robert Benchley returns with, well, thoughts on fuel saving, which are most appropriate as we enter autumn. Mr. Benchl...

From the Food Vault Dept .: I ran the review below on this blog a decade ago as the sidebar to another piece from the same Metroland issue. ...

From the Record Shelf Dept .: The reason for this reissue is explained in the text. I’m just not certain if it truly ran in Metroland , the ...

From the Classical Vault Dept.: I’ve been covering the Bard Summerscape series for enough years that some of the earlier programs I’ve atte...

From the Theater Vault Dept. : Thirty-five years after the piece below appeared, Bread and Puppet Theater is still active, still based in Gl...

With Labor Day upon us again, let's revisit a classic song performed by Mordecai Bauman and the Manhattan Chorus.

Guest Blogger Dept. : Mark Twain published surprisingly little about the abolitionist cause, which had been a heated subject in his childhoo...

From the Classical Vault Dept. : I remember this concert well. The aged audience at Memorial Chapel was usually given to odd coughs and eruc...

From the Theater Vault Dept .: Here’s a memory-lane piece that reminds me of folks in the area theater community who became friends, and one...

From the Food Vault Dept .: I’m delighted to see that the Rose and Kettle is still holding strong, having weathered the pandemic (so far) i...