Obit

R.I.P. George Shearing
August 13, 1919 – February 14, 2011

L'Image du Jour

Hand Jive - Basel Style

Weekend (a travelogue by Roscoe)



Going up to the mountains is always a nice change of pace.




There are new things to play with



What's that up there?



Whooooaaaa..it's a lot bigger close up!



The shift in altitude is always interesting.




The day winds down and jets make their way to Geneva.





The Argentine lights up briefly.





Sunset...off to bed.

Press Leak



A fable for our times:

The Dumbing Down of America
by Leonard Pitts Jr.

Once upon a time, there lived a stupid giant.

The giant had not always been stupid. Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say the giant had once revered intelligence, reason and the byproducts thereof. Indeed, the giant was renowned for an ingenuity and standard of living that made it the envy of the world.

But much of the world did more than envy the giant. Much of the world admired and respected it. Its basic decency, along with its strength and intelligence, set it apart.

There came a time, however, when, though the giant retained its strength and arguably even its decency, it lost its intelligence.

No one can say exactly how and when the loss occurred. There was no great blast of thunder and lightning to herald it, no sudden instant when the giant's intelligence plummeted dramatically from the instant before.

No, stupidity crept over the giant with the stealth of twilight, a product less of one abrupt moment than of a thousand moments of complacency, of resting on laurels, of allowing curiosity to be teased and bullied out of bright children, of dumbing down textbooks so kids could get better grades with less work, of using ``elite'' like a curse word. And, of behaving as if knowing things, and being able to extrapolate from and otherwise make critical use of, the things one knows, was a betrayal of some fundamental human authenticity -- some need to keep it real.

Read the rest here.

Track Back



I must confess, when I was a little girl I had such a crush on Dean Martin. I don't know which I wanted more, to be grown up so I could marry him, or have him be my daddy and sing me to sleep every night.

L'Image du Jour




How fabulous are these globes from ImagineNation? Go check out the Maurice Sendak themed one and more here.

L'Image Du Jour





There are a lot of blogs and pages out there with photos from Chernobyl, but these ones grabbed me because most of them are basically average snap shots, but there are a few that are simply haunting. Browse the set here.

L'Image du Jour

I found this fantastic French blog, Le Divan Fumoir Bohémien, and spent most of yesterday drooling over the pictures and finding all kinds of nifty little museums to check out next time we're in Paris.

And to keep you in that French state of mind, here's a little Georges Brassens:

L'Image du Jour

The Big G and I were in Paris last month (for our first anniversary!) and found FLEUX, a shop full of weird, wonderous and beautifully designed things for your home, office or life in general. We saw these serving trays arrayed along one large wall ... can something be charming and creepy at the same time? See more here (under plateaux).