It was clear to me before I confirmed it on the handy-dandy internet that whoever wrote the line “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy” never lived in Texas. Sure enough, DeBose Heyward was born and lived much of his life in Charleston, South Carolina. I’ve been to Charleston in the summertime, and the livin’ aIn’t easy there that time of […]
Vocabulary is a rather beautiful thing. I don’t mean a collection of words but the actual polysyllabic word. Polysyllabic itself is a rather beautiful thing in much the same way. English is full of words like these. From A to Z, our language gives us everything from archaeological and anthropological on over to zoological and zoographical. There are more of […]
Most everyone has a favorite Christmas movie, and I am no exception. But Home Alone and Elf do not do it for me. For decades, we usher in the season with something less traditional but certainly full of more biting wit. The Lion in Winter is, at its heart, just another movie about the children coming home for Christmas, along with the next-door neighbor attending as well with his half-sister. Except in this case, Daddy is Henry II of England, Mother […]
Sometimes an aging English major will trip and fall down a rabbit hole, sometimes with Alice and sometimes on one’s own. I’ve been groping around for about a week now in one that was not of Lewis Carroll but rather George Orwell. Orwell is one of the few writers whose name has been adapted into an adjective. Just as we […]
Vivien Leigh is most remembered for giving two of the best performances ever caught on film. Despite being British, she won her Oscars playing two very different daughters of the American South. Her Scarlett O’Hara is a tenacious survivor who will stop at nothing to get what she wants in Gone with the Wind, ending the film with the famous […]
Narcissus was the incredibly beautiful child of a nymph and a river god, according to mythology. He rejected all advances from both women and men (men as well, of course, as this is a Greek story). One day, a thirsty Narcissus leaned down to drink from a pool of water and saw himself, immediately falling in love with his own […]
We were a game-playing family. Not just on holidays, but almost anytime we got together. Board games, card games, dominoes, all sorts of games. When I was the youngest in the family, I think I started playing as soon as I could hold my share of Old Maid cards in my hand. I progressed to Go Fish, which has a […]
If one is a connoisseur of fine wines, which decidedly I am not, a person could speak knowledgeably about a particular vintage, its bouquet, and its undertones. That kind of discrimination is something to be admired in most cases, that is when it’s not just showing off. Similarly, there are other discriminating tastes one might have or acquire for art or literature, let’s say. But then there’s that other kind […]
When reproached by Suellen O’Hara that her treatment of Mr. Kennedy and his infestation of “crawlin’ clothes” was humiliating, Mammy clapped back, “You’d be a sight more humiliated if Mr. Kennedy’s lice gets on ya.” Of course, that’s from Gone with the Wind, and the subject is worth expounding upon all these years later. I mean humiliation, but not necessarily […]
After months of teasing, bumping, grinding, and more than a little tassel twirling, Trump went full monty this week by endorsing Attorney General Ken Paxton over Senator John Cornyn in the race for the Republican nomination for the U. S. Senate seat that Cornyn currently holds. Well, maybe not full monty as Trump is continuing to tease J. D. Vance […]
