Sleeping Muse and Falling Rocket

My favorite Oscar Wilde quote: "I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips." Walt Whitman visited Colorado in 1879. Oscar Wilde visited Colorado in 1882. Not together. But how nice that would have been.

I often confuse Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds with Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women.

In Inherit the Wind, Jason Robards played a character named Henry Drummond. In A Big Hand for the Little Lady, Jason Robards played a character named Henry Drummond.

How strange it must be for any cellist to play the Elgar or the Dvorak -- the Dvorak! -- with Daniel Barenboim, knowing that the memory, the sound of Jacqueline du Pre lives within him! Dvorak Cello Concerto - Jacqueline du Pre

If David was 18 feet tall, how the hell tall was Goliath?

I have never been much of a sports fan. That said, I have always loved the connection between baseball and storytelling, the pastoral and the lyrical, athletics and poetics. Casey at the Bat, Shoeless Joe and Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, The Natural... It just happened again... Reading Paul Auster's 4 3 2 1. It is not about baseball, but a chapter describes a seven year old boy and his family's housekeeper watching the opening game of the 1954 World Series, between the Indians and the Dodgers. A game about which, unsurprisingly, I knew nothing. But Auster's telling the story of Willy Mays and The Catch brought me to tears  Just gorgeous. Gorgeous in the game and gorgeous in the telling. "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game -- and do so by watching some high school or small-town teams."  - Jacques Barzun