By:
On:
In: Born On This Date, On Food and Cooking
Tagged: , ,

Born this date, 1956: Anthony Bourdain. There are few voices I miss today more than that of Anthony Bourdain. His warm-hearted embrace of the entire world, his endless curiosity, his willingness to bridge gaps and accept differences–these are qualities our world is deeply lacking today. I, myself, fall short of his example…but I do try. Obviously I’m not able to travel as much as Bourdain did, but I do what I can. His oft-cited bits of travel advice, starting with eating where the locals eat, are always well taken. By pure good luck, I read a book of Bourdain’s wisdomDown the rabbit hole….

By:
On:
In: Born On This Date, Life
Tagged:

As I keep adding to this post every year, and with cross-posting it and importing it from my old blog to this one, I suppose it gets a bit more ungainly each year. Well, that’s just the way it is. Today is The Wife’s birthday, and I’m celebrating. As always, new stuff added at the end of the list; also as always, I don’t edit what I’ve written before or revise anything that’s out of date. Think of some of that stuff as growth rings on a tree…part of the reason of this post is to preserve memories.  Happy Birthday,Down the rabbit hole….

By:
On:
In: Born On This Date, music
Tagged:

Sheila and Roger have Judy Garland posts up, and I could hardly fail to do the same. Garland was born 100 years ago today, and how much poorer our world would be without that voice, that marvelous alto of hers–full-throated, just this side of operatic, so marvelously resonant, her way of hitting a pitch just under and then sliding into it like a resolution all her own, and of course that perfect shimmering vibrato she used to equally perfect effect in song after song after song throughout her too-brief life. Judy Garland was one of the greatest things about beingDown the rabbit hole….

By:
On:
In: Born On This Date, music, Uncategorized
Tagged:

(BOTD: Born On This Date. An idea I’m brazenly and openly stealing from Sheila O’Malley, who is the master of these kinds of posts.) Today is the birthdate of Fanny Mendelssohn. She was a pianist and composer, but her own work was supplanted in her time by virtue of her being a woman and her younger brother, Felix, being one of the great musicians of her day. Fanny’s skill as a performer was substantial, but apparently she rarely performed for anyone outside her own familial circle, and adding insult to injury, a number of her compositions were credited to Felix,Down the rabbit hole….