Poke-nook, the Lost Glove and My Cousin Isly

Our filmmaker friend Arnie Reisman is a regular panelist on Says You, a witty NPR radio show about words.  I’ve learned a lot from Arnie and his literate pals.  For example,  did you know that the dark, cavernous corner of a woman’s handbag is called a poke- nook?  Remember that word. Now do you remember last winter I blogged about losing one of my green gloves when I pulled it off quickly to answer my cell phone?  (See Lost Glove,  Nov. 30,  2013). At the time I worried that...

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Parlez-vous francais?

My husband is an excellant linguist and speaks French beautifully.  His Hungarian-speaking mother and German-speaking father met and fell in love in Paris in 1937,  and two years later they fled Europe together on the cusp of World War II.  They took their common language – French – with them,  and Danny learned it as a child. It happens I studied French in both high school and college,  but I must admit I’ve always spoken it poorly,  or as Danny would ungraciously tell...

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Missing Pussycat Redux

You may remember I blogged about a time some years ago when I was sure our pussycat Smokey had been mysteriously sealed up in the wall like the poor guy in Poe’s story,  The Cask of Amontillado.  In fact  I had accidentally locked the cat out in the hall –  thus the muffled meows!    (see MISSING PUSSYCAT,  January 4,  2014) Well recently I was in missing-pussycat-panic-mode again,  this time convinced that our beloved cat Jackie was lost in the Connecticut woods! It was a...

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Why I Blog

One evening over a year ago,  with no forethought that I recall,  I sat down and started writing this blog.   Some friends were already blogging and I loved reading their posts.  But though I had always enjoyed writing and had taken some writing workshops over the years (and even had a stack of unpublished letters-to-editors in my desk),  I never had the ambition or the sitzfleisch to pursue a writing life. Yet that evening the blog title  “World Thru Brown Eyes”  came to me...

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Revelations

On a cold January night in 1960 a 29 year-old African American dancer and  choreographer named Alvin Ailey premiered a piece called Revelations at the 92nd St Y. Inspired by what Ailey called blood memories of his rural Texas childhood, and by Negro spirituals, gospel and the blues,  Revelations is about tribulation, human tenacity and the saving grace of music and dance. That night at the Y,  Ailey and his young troupe brought down the house and Revelations made modern dance history...

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