I’m not sure I even realized that Shakespeare wrote a play called Henry V let alone that I would like it.  Harold Bloom (my stuffy discussant) had very little to say about it other than Falstaff isn’t in it.  He seems to judge every character by Falstaff or Hamlet.  I get it: they’re transcendent characters.   Read the Rest…

Now that everyone is talking pretty freely about vaginas these days, I trust no one will mind if today’s subject is bras.  I hate them.  I have been measured and prodded and fitted for them at least ten times.  In 45 years of wearing bras, there was one that was comfortable once for five minutes  Read the Rest…

In which I begin to cobble together what literary flotsam I do possess and attempt to read the entire works of William Shakespeare. It’s summer.  People are talking about their summer reading lists.  Here’s what happened to me: I loved Stephen Greenblatt’s book The Swerve.( https://www.elenalouiserichmond.com/2012/05/swerving-and-centering/) It  led me to dust off his Will in  Read the Rest…

Last week before the lilac fell and Gwen, my neighbor who knows something about just about everything, brought her chain saw over to lay waste both to the tree and to any fragments of male chauvinism in this neighborhood of powerful women, I had written a series of politicizing, sermonizing, sarcasmizing blogs posts which prompted  Read the Rest…

It started out to be a quiet Monday morning with sunshine, a bright blue sky, and the promise of 70 degrees.  I was up early, reading in my sun room, stopping occasionally to look at the downed lilac tree that had keeled over from its roots during a wind storm a few days ago. I  Read the Rest…

“I have no interest in being constantly catered to or forcing my beliefs on others,” confesses a former conservative. Recently I found my way to his web site via a blog post called “Things I Can’t Do Anymore.” http://formerconservative.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/things-i-cant-do-anymore/ One of the things this particular individual can’t do anymore is feel a sense of entitlement.  Read the Rest…