Category: Books
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My favorite city in Japan made the news a few months ago, following a burst of lava from the side of its volcano, Sakurajima, sited in Kagoshima Bay. Sakurajima has had small eruptions for some time now, which are of concern because a nuclear plant lies only 30 miles away. For me the concern is…
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This is a searingly beautiful account of Catherine Raven’s journey from alienation to healing through the ministrations of an unusual wild fox. Raven is a survivor, a hardy soul from a dysfunctional family, highly intelligent, acutely sensitive, and brutally honest. Trained as a biologist, she rambles through an eclectic sampling of natural history and her…
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In 2017 I decided to write a book about the Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, and I spent the next three years closely analyzing his 33 extant films along with 3 fragments, researching the historical background, and catching up with what other scholars had written. I had been writing about Ozu since 1983, and my…
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If you haven't read the book but you'd like to see the movie, here is the link: https://youtu.be/lISq-7bID94
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In John Ford’s enormously seminal film The Searchers (1956), two men spend five years searching for a young girl who has been abducted by Indians. When they find her, she has entered her teens and become one of the chief’s wives. At first she declares her allegiance to the tribe but later changes her mind and…
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Mid-June, 2012, had Shelburne Falls and much of the rest of Franklin County all a-gawk as the film crew for Labor Day came to town. For several days, the village of Shelburne Falls became “Holton Mills, New Hampshire,” with principal filming in or in front of many local businesses: Rethreads, Keystone Market, Baker Pharmacy, and…
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Not being either a school teacher, mother or grandmother, my familiarity with children’s books written after the 1960’s is sketchy at best, although I did read the entire Harry Potter series. I was inspired to do a little catching up when author Sheila O’Connor stayed with us this past summer, and, later in the summer, The…
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The one-year anniversary of Hurricane Irene came and went, and I tried not to notice. Grass has grown back, as best it could, given the drought. The garden is re-established, still lacking many perennials but with improved soil and design; we have added a second garden, especially for daylilies. We love the broad, mow-able path…
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