Posted in Life and culture, Memory Lane, Music, People on Nov 10th, 2007 No Comments »
Young Mailer’s first novel The Naked and the Dead turned him into an overnight celebrity but it appeared early enough for its publisher to have serious problems with a pungent monosyllable that peppered the manuscript. Mailer had written naturalistically about the robust young Americans in uniform he’d known during World War II, and for him [...]
Posted in Letter from Berlin, Life and culture, People, Politics on Nov 9th, 2007 No Comments »
The online magazine salon has scored some notable coups in the field of investigative journalism, but I recall none that’s so impressed and inexpressibly horrified me as this one, about the barbarous torture euphemistically called “waterboarding”, which the Bush-Cheney criminal conspiracy not only condones and practises but also inexorably defends as indispensable “under present circumstances”. [...]
Posted in Events, Letter from Berlin, Life and culture, People on Nov 9th, 2007 1 Comment »
I believe I told at least some of you at one point or another that although I’ve long since collected the handsome certificate (now beautifully framed, for a prominent place on the wall of my Berlin apartment’s entry hall) proclaiming me a citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany, the formal ceremony for us Neudeutsche [...]
Posted in Events, Letter from Berlin, Life and culture, Music, People on Nov 7th, 2007 No Comments »
From an unimpeachable, totally reliable source I have this latest shaming tidbit of barbarous stateside yahoo nitwittery towards distinguished visiting foreign artists in the fatuous name of “security”, a sacrosanct word which for the incumbent criminal administration apparently excuses no matter what indignities. The Berlin Philharmonic, billed by Carnegie Hall for four concerts with its [...]
Posted in Letter from Berlin, Life and culture, Music, People, Politics on Nov 3rd, 2007 1 Comment »
As a reputable musical journalist of several decades’ high-level experience, I almost invariably avoid even mentioning sources I feel I must, for whatever reason, leave anonymous, but I feel strongly that this present instance justifies such an exception. On October 8th, a New York Times article under James R. Oestreich’s byline led off with this: [...]
Posted in Commonplace Book, Letter from Berlin, Life and culture, Memory Lane, People on Nov 1st, 2007 No Comments »
Back during the period when German television strove mightily to adopt and adapt the lucrative magic formula that had created such American advertising bonanzas as the pioneer talk shows of Jack Paar, Dick Cavett, et al., I once with stricken eyes watched Cavett’s interview, conducted in Cologne by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk’s chief honcho Werner Höfer [...]
Posted in Commonplace Book, Letter from Berlin, Memory Lane, People, Politics, Reflections on Nov 1st, 2007 No Comments »
When a day begins with one unexpected pleasant surprise, it has the same effect upon me that William Wordsworth’s rainbow had on him. When two further unexpected surprises bless the day, that rare benison gooses me into at least mental writing – in this event into what involuntarily took form between my ears during a [...]
Ich bin ein [Texas-Born] Berliner
Life, people, and Kultur
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