Diary: Looking for a good biography of Eugene V. Debs? This isn’t it
This being an election year — and accordingly, utterly infuriating on a daily basis for the MAGA stupidity it embodies — I thought it...
Diary: Atlas Shrugged and how Bob Youngblood taught me to appreciate Charles Dickens
At best, I tend to regard Ayn Rand as a sociopath, and yet I’ve read her ball-boiling pot-buster (and seemingly interminable) novel Atlas Shrugged.
Why...
Daphne Phelps and “A House in Sicily”
The struggle to learn the language was wearing, when study necessarily took place after long days of dealing with endless kind visitors who felt...
My year in books and reading, 2023
Just before I was born in 1960, my parents purchased a complete hardbound set of the Compton’s Encyclopedia; furthermore, they subscribed to the annual...
Take me, I’m existentially yours (or, crisis—what crisis?)
This essay appeared as an "On the Avenues" column on January 1, 2019. For those reading from afar, be aware that in metro Louisville,...
My year in books, 2022
Just before I was born in 1960, my parents purchased a complete set of hardbound Compton's Encyclopedia and subscribed to the annual yearbook supplements....
Does New Albany even have an intellectual history?
Originally written and published at NA Confidential on October 30, 2014.
ON THE AVENUES: Does New Albany even have an intellectual history?
The last time I...
Menu Items: “Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants and Intoxicants”
Originally published at the Food & Dining Magazine web site on 13 September 2020.
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Nothing could be more common than the salt and pepper on...
Roger’s year in books and reading, 2021
When it comes to books, I’ve never seriously attempted to rank a year’s reading in terms of "best of" or the like. To be...
Books: “Bowling for Communism” in Leipzig
Leipzig was among the East German cities to be visited in 1989 during my August working holiday in the GDR, but the group excursion...
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Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 7: Vienna and the dawning of a Habsburg fixation
Previously: Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 6: Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian chaser.
During my stay in Rome, a veteran Australian wanderer taught me a “wedding...
Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 6: Pecetto idyll, with a Parisian chaser
(I'm including examples of songs I heard while in Europe in 1985. I'd like to say that I recall music of local origin, but...
Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 5: A critical Mass in Rome — and the famous...
Musical introduction, or "the songs I heard playing in 1985 as I traveled around Europe." I had no Walkman or radio of my own,...
