Arts & Culture
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Last night at the Brady Theater, Garrison Keillor sang and told stories accompanied only by a piano and his red sneakers. He talked about a conversation with a girl from an age he didn’t quite understand. She had lots of steel in various orifices, the lips, ears, nose. Keillor said it looked as if she…
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Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. ~ Victor Hugo I had a reputation as a youngster that enshrouded me like cigar smoke hovering over Churchill on a still summer evening. I sang pretty well. I sang because my church sang a capella and everyone sang. If…
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Leaving Wittenberg after a European breakfast of assorted cheeses, Nuremberg sausage, fruit, danishes, croissants, tea and coffee, we drove through the German countryside near Potsdam on our way to Berlin. Crisp asphalt lanes lined with white wooden posts streamed past our periphery like toppled bowling pins and leafy hardwood trees formed a canopy over our…
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Thursday was wild card day so we chose a city of interest between Friday’s Berlin walk-about and Rothenburg. Martin Luther is a famous catalyst for the Protestant reformation and in the year 1517 he posted 95 reasons why indulgences, buying and selling absolution for sins, was contrary to the standard of sola scriptura, or by…
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To the train we skipped along a trail by the lake, under a bridge, into a tunnel, to Rathaus, or council house where the city government is located. We ate bratwurst and currywurst and walked to get gelato. Then canoes on the Alster river, a network of lazy canals winding behind huge beautiful homes with…
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“See dad, this is why I love Europe.” Lauren chirped as I awaited the definitive progressive announcement of civilization, a word picture that sums it all up. “Hmm, what is it?” I intoned with jet lag weariness. “They have armoires!” “What’s an armoire?” said Jenna. God bless my cultured children. This morning we awoke to…
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The bus crossed the 7th street bridge and I peered over the rail through an open window at the eddies of a muddy river, swirling coffee relentlessly shaping the bank of naked earth. On my first day of junior high ringing bells punctuated my hourly class schedule. This change in my academic life assaulted my…
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One of my best friends has a son who works at J.Crew. My son has a summer job driving the trash truck to the dump and he shops at Goodwill. But I think I’ve figured it out. It’s genetic. The why I mean. The why of why I dressed like an idiot until buying a…
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When you are young and the world is your oyster, older folks are wont to lend much wisdom thus rendering the use of knives to open the sublime stubborn shell, rather useless. As if allowing youngsters to pry open oysters in search of a beautiful pearl is beyond their ability and to wield sharp objects…
Bespoke 