Mr. Stackpool was a stout, cheerful, talkative solicitor. He wore a pair of horn-rimmed glasses which were so thick and heavy that they constantly threatened to pull his face down into his collar. Mrs. Stackpool was smaller all round. She had a worried expression. it could easily have been caused by her husband's bidding and play.
# Permanent link to “This is not a B.B.C. television program.”
‘I would rather be ashes than dust.’
I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent flow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to…
Who Won A Copy of the French Edition of Though Not Dead
As alert (and subscribed) readers noticed in Monday’s Roadhouse Report, I offered four copies of the French edition of Though Not Dead (the 18th Kate Shugak novel and my favorite so far) to the first four librarians who wrote in. And the winnahs are— Angela Hughes Franklin Square Public Library Franklin Square, New York Susan…
Read more Who Won A Copy of the French Edition of Though Not Dead
“I really lucked out,” she says, “I just got a hundred pounds of female antlers.” Yes, she can tell the difference.
Traditionally Bad Girls opens Fridays from 4-9 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. I’ve never been to a Friday night Bad Girls opening that doesn’t make a salmon spawning stream in July look positively roomy. It might have something to do with the fact that they serve wine and hors d’oeuvres opening…
[from the stabenow.com vaults, 4/26/2010]
We are lucky in our lifetime to have scientists who are as able with their pens as they are with their petrie dishes, people like Richard Feynman, Freeman Dyson, Lewis Thomas.
# Permanent link to Carl Sagan
My personal favorite is astronomer Carl Sagan, yes, he of the billions and billions. In his collections of essays, this curious and eclectic thinker writes about everything from the sex lives of dolphins to the prehistory of earth to Immanuel Velikovsky’s theories of alien visitation. No subject is safe from Sagan, in print or in life, and he was one of modern science’s great interpreters, even when it wasn’t strictly necessary, vide the following story.
Love a good author’s note.
Love a good author’s note. None but the most blindly credulous will imagine the characters and events in this story to be anything but fictitious. It is true that the ancient and noble city of Oxford is, of all the towns of England, the likeliest progenitor of unlikely events and persons. But there are limits.…
“BEER TRAIN.” There are two words which, in conjunction, should make anyone sit up and take notice.
The Great Alaska Beer Train, the product of a brainstorming session between the people at Glacier Brewhouse, an Alaskan restaurant and brewery, and the folks at Alaska Railroad is an annual four-hour train ride from Anchorage to Portage and back, with beer and food served on route. It is also the answer to any Anchoragite’s…
Tangier has been mentioned in history for three thousand years. And it was a town, although a queer one, when Hercules, clad in his lion-skin landed here four thousand years ago. In the streets he met Anitus, the king of the country, and brained him with his club, which was the fashion among gentlemen in those days.
# Permanent link to “You may please to understand that I am hear in Salley, in most miserable captivitye, under the hands of most cruel tyrants.”
All Finnegan knew, and all he wanted to know, was that he was loved without question.
# Permanent link to “The pickle today might have been a miscalculation…”
Book Brahmins Questionnaire
[From the 2009 stabenow.com vaults.] A while back I was asked to answer the Book Brahmins Questionnaire on Shelf Awareness. Never hard to get me talking about books I love, so I did, and here are their questions and my answers: On your nightstand now: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill…