I'll take Mozart or Rossini over Puccini most days of the year, but (OK, husband and daughter, I admit it) I do enjoy Tosca. Alphonse Mucha, who created a poster for…
While writing last week's post on rhetoric, I ran across Ovid's description of Medea pondering whether to betray her family for the sake of Jason, with whom she's fallen in…
Three major bridge replacements have been in progress in the Tristate area during the past few years. The Goethals Bridge, dating to the 1920s, connects Elizabeth, New Jersey, with the…
Henry Van Dyke, Jr. (1852-1933) was sent as United States ambassador to Holland and Luxemburg in 1913, just before the Great War (World War I) erupted. Perhaps it was that…
NIneteenth-century poetry and exploding Looney Tunes villains. Thomas Moore set foot on the road to fame and a regular income in 1808, with the publication of the first of ten…
Years ago I bought this poster of an exuberant bouquet by Jan van Huysum (1682-1749), which was at the time on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It's…
Athens Square (corner of 30th Avenue and 30th St.) is in Astoria, a New York City neighborhood with a sizable Greek-American population. Over the past twenty-five years, residents have partnered…
"The Lady Clare," by Alfred Lord Tennyson It was the time when lilies blow, And clouds are highest up in air, Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe To give his…
This poem has always stuck in my mind because of the brilliant way de La Mare leaves the beginning of the story to the imagination. "The Listeners," by Walter de La Mare, 1912…
Knowledge is never wasted except on those too lazy to use it: Augustus Saint Gaudens produced exquisite portrait reliefs throughout his career using skills he learned at age thirteen, as a cameo-cutter. One…