Barcelona

I’ll be away for a month, to be assessed as a teacher and to take time out to see where I should go next. This is the longest I’ve been away from my husband since my dad died some 17 years ago. It’s not the best time to go, either. But when is ever a […]

Amy Winehouse at 19

Amy Winehouse, dead, at 27. This was her at 19. So sad. One more for the 27 Club. Take the box – Amy Winehouse Your neighbours were screaming I don’t have a key for downstairs, so I punched all the buzzers hoping you wouldn’t be there So now my head’s hurting You say I always […]

Ruby’s shoes, ruby shoes

“The Problem We All Live With”  by Norman Rockwell is currently on display at the White House, just outside the president’s office. It shows Ruby Bridges, the most famous of the children who in 1960, at the age of 6, walked into an all-white school and helped desegregate the schools of New Orleans. Daddy’s brave […]

Marlee Matlin and Jack Jason

An article by Nataly Kelly landed in my intray, and it was interesting to follow up: Jack Jason is actress Marlee Matlin‘s interpreter. Watch them interact here: Do you notice the places where she “says” nothing, but gives us this look, this fabulous body language, this space where we infer and bond and relate, and […]

Marlene Dietrich: Falling in Love again – Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss

Marlene in English and German and then again in English, great German accent; followed by Caroline Nin singing franco-anglo-tinged German. ICH BIN VON KOPF BIS FUSS AUF LIEBE EINGESTELLT (Friedrich Holländer) Marlene Dietrich Ein rätselhafter Schimmer, Ein “je ne sais-pas-quoi” Liegt in den Augen immer Bei einer schönen Frau. Doch wenn sich meine Augen Bei […]

Joe Jackson and learner agency

Joe Jackson has a new live album out, and I’ve just ordered it. He lives in Berlin. I found this marvellously provocative video dedicated to him by New Yorkers who want him back: This all came out of surfing around after Ann posted something about Coney Island being the target of redevelopment, and Coney Island […]

Samuel L. Jackson reads “Go the F*ck to Sleep”

Samuel L. Jackson reads the book “Go the F*ck to Sleep” by Adam Mansbach. Not in my parents’ generation, and not among some of my brothers’ families, but I do think “what the f*ck” and other similar phrases using “the fuck” as an intensifier are very prevalent indeed even in everyday family talk. I had […]