AUTHOR & TRANSLATOR
and 19 other 20-second stories to wash your hands to from The Memory Palace. These stories are great to listen to even when you're not washing your hands. And the whole Memory Palace podcast is wonderful, perfect escapism for our times, featuring "short vignettes about people, places, and objects from the past and the memories …
Continue reading "Silver Linings (34) The Song of a Humpback Whale"
Pink Petal Promenade by Erin Cramer in London At the Brooklyn Botanic Garden CHERRYWATCH check out which cherry varieties are in first bloom: And which are in peak bloom: And I've been noticing some very cool Zoom backgrounds recently. Here are some more from Public Domain including this one from the left panel of …
Gratitude to all of you who send me great content for Silver Linings but especially to Lina Bertucci, photographer extraordinaire, who shared this video with me after it was shared with her by the mother of one of the participants who is an actor on Broadway. Lina took that incredible photo of me which …
Continue reading "Silver Linings (32) Taking My Fifth Nap Today: The 5-Minute Zoom Musical"
Easter, 1916 BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses. I have passed with a nod of the head Or polite meaningless words, Or have lingered awhile and said Polite meaningless words, And thought before I had done Of a …
Continue reading "Silver Linings (29) A Terrible Beauty is Born"
September 1, 1939 W. H. Auden - 1907-1973 I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends …
Continue reading "Silver Linings (28) We must love one another or die"
Today I am sending out waves and vibes of gratitude to the universe and to you for all the kind wishes and congratulations that my Guggenheim Fellowship elicited. I feel very loved. The one thing I may love as much as you all (or more?:) is books. I know it sounds hokey but it's …
I am honored and humbled. The funny thing is that yesterday I was thinking, oh, what am I going to post on Silver Linings tomorrow? I'd run out of ideas, my energy and enthusiasm during this dark time was on the wane, I was really struggling to muster positivity. I thought, maybe tomorrow I'll …
Continue reading "Silver Linings (26) Guggenheim Fellowship"
Funny how the simplest things are the hardest to translate. The literal English translation of the title of this iconic film, starring two of the world's best comedians of all time, Anna Magnani and Toto', is "Joyful Laughter" and yet that's all wrong. It doesn't capture the soaring, hysterical, belly laugh, jouissance of "Risate di …
Jenny McPhee 