Royal Reflections

Apparently, based on my Twitter feed, something happened yesterday that I didn’t know or care about. The result is people venting their outrage on social media today. This caused some rather old memories to come back to the surface. I want to talk about those memories. I used to work at Borders Books and Music…

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Time and Place

In the wake of George H.W. Bush’s death there has been a lot of nice things said about him. That’s to be expected. It’s what people do when a person dies. What has been less expected, although not totally unexpected, is the reaction of many people on the political left. They have been posting a…

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Charles Dickens – A Christmas Carol – Stave Four, The Last of the Spirits

Of all the staves, this is probably the easiest one to get right on film.  The spirit is nothing more than a black, hooded robe with a “spectral” hand outstretched.  There are a few conversations about the death (Scrooge doesn’t realize it is his own death, but it’s obvious to the audience).  Then a scene…

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Orrin Keepnews

Orrin Keepnews died today, just one day shy of his 92nd birthday.  I knew his work, of course, but I went to his Discogs page just to look around and I was totally blown away.  He is credited on 752 records for production.  And a huge percentage of those are absolute classics.  There’s Monk, Sonny…

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Losing a Parent

There are many books designed to give advice about how to deal with the loss of a parent. Unfortunately, the odds of a book helping are rather slim. Luckily, I haven’t had to deal with it myself. But as a person who has parents and is a parent, I’ve learned one thing. Even though relationships…

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Cinnamon

“Well, what have we here? We weren’t expecting you for quite some time. What happened?” “‘Scuse me?” “We thought we had another 20-25 years before you got here,” the gate attendant replied. Jack looked around at the fluffy ground and giant golden gate in front of him.  “Am I dead?” he asked. “Yup.” “Wow.  How’d…

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