Even while I’m typing something else, I can hear the electronic ping of the messages, over the transom. My friends and family post songs and photos, poems and videos. We all know the blessing of having friends in Brazil and Japan, Canada and Mexico. It’s so easy these days. My new email friend, Hassan in Yorkshire, writes about soccer and justice and music. There’s a common thread, I am sure. The other day he sent me a photo from visiting London in snow. I’ve been to London, what, 50 times and have never seen snow. But there it was, Berkeley Square. My wife and I have walked uphill through that square at night, usually around 10:30, after the National Theatre, and we were tired and happy. But never in snow. Hassan knows I consider Nina Simone one of the great masters. He found a video of her signature piano -- you always know it’s Simone, before she even sings a note. Somehow, she makes bells peal in a riff from Good King Wenceslas before drifting into Little Girl Blue. In this amazing new electronic age, a gift from Yorkshire,
George Vecsey
3/9/2012 05:28:48 am
Often wondered what became of that guy.
Alan Rubin
3/15/2012 08:36:15 am
You can't say enough about Nina Simone. She also appeared at the Beacon Theater on Broadway and 77th street. Comments are closed.
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QUOTES
“They may hate the cultural context they now find themselves teaching in, but they love their work. The Achilles’ heel of schoolteachers, one all too easily exploited by politicians, is that they love their students.” (One of the best reads in the NYT these days is Margaret Renkl, in Nashville. In her latest post, Renkl describes the dedicated core of “born teachers” – the majority, she submits.) *** (From Madeleine Albright in one of her final interviews in February): “Putin is small and pale,” I wrote, “so cold as to be almost reptilian.” He claimed to understand why the Berlin Wall had to fall but had not expected the whole Soviet Union to collapse. “Putin is embarrassed by what happened to his country and determined to restore its greatness.” – Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, recalling her first meeting with the relatively unknown Vladimir Putin in 2000. – The New York Times, Feb. 23, 2022. Categories
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