‘A Texas Dad Tried to Kayak His Daughters’ – WSJ 7-6-2025
“A Texas Dad Tried to Kayak to His Daughters. The Girls Texted ‘I Love You.’ ”
By Patience Haggin
The Wall Street Journal
July 6 2025
A story like this would make Hemingway envious.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
June 6. 2025
excerpts – ‘A Note on the Family Tongue’
“SINCE BOTH WJ AND HJ were lifelong writers, the most enduring influence from their father was his gift of language.” — F. O. Mathiessen
Posted here (PDF above):
F. O. Mathiessen, “A Note on the Family Tongue”
IN F. O. Mathiessen, The James Family: Including Selections from the Writings of Henry James, Senior, William, Henry, & Alice James (New York: Afred A. Knopf, 1961), pp. 101-112
— posted by Roger W. Smith
May 2025
A question for the writer of the Jan. 23 Metro headline “Episcopalian bishop has a history with Trump”: Would you top a story with “Californian governor meets with first responders”? Or “Virginian senator celebrates reelection”? Like “Californian” and “Virginian,” “Episcopalian” is almost always a noun denoting a person — in this case, a member of the Episcopal Church.
To The Post’s credit, the [words in the title of the] article was correct: “the Episcopal bishop of Washington.”
— Maurice Fliess, letter to editor, The Washington Post, January 31 2025
*****************************************************
A distinction worth noting. And why do Republicans always refer to the DEMOCRAT party? They do it with a malign intent. To lessen (so they believe) by nomenclature the party’s stature.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
January 31, 2025
A eulogy is not a Britannica entry, biographical sketch, or “performance review.”
Avoid negatives, but don’t make things up.
Talk from the vantage point of your personal experience with the subject.
Bring it to life with anecdotes. A eulogy is not a summary. The anecdotal material can be “episodic” and does need to be chronological.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
November 2024
“Schwartz’s poems, especially the later ones, are dated. They groan under a freight of leaden rhymes and — Schwartz had a capacious mind — showy philosophical and literary references, spillover from the overstocked pantry that was his mind.”
— Dwight Garner, “Delmore Schwartz’s Poems Are Like Salt Flicked on the World,” The New York Times, April 8, 2024
review of The Collected Poems of Delmore Schwartz, edited by Ben Mazer
— posted by Roger W. Smith
April 11, 2024
A native of Langford, Ireland, McNally’s murder has left communities on both sides of the Atlantic “in a state of shock” since the Friday attack.
— “Boyfriend charged in death of ‘sweet, innocent’ Irish beauty stabbed inside NYC pub: ‘We are heart broken’ ,” By Amanda Woods and Alex Oliveira, New York Post, April 2 2024
Is this taught in high school English classes anymore?
— posted by Roger W. Smith
April 2, 2024
