- Stay Connected
Follow Town Topics Online
“The Common Fate of All Things Rare”: Or Fats Waller’s Last Ride
Aware that this issue will be appearing on Fats Waller’s 110th birthday, I’m listening to “Honeysuckle Rose,” the first track on If You Got to Ask, You Ain’t Got It,…
On and Off the Crooked Road of Genius — A Shady Dog Story
If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. —George Harrison, from “Any Road” First off, I didn’t know that last week’s trip to the Shady…
“Can This Be Happening on Television?” — The Twin Peaks Effect Goes Gold
I started out just as a regular person, growing up in the Northwest …. —David Lynch Once upon a time during the reign of George I, on April 9, 1990,…
The Poetry of Numbers — Crossing Manhattan on the Memory Line
Where was the place after all …. Was it ‘on’ Third Avenue, on Second, on fabulous unattempted First? Nothing would induce me to cut down the romance of it, in…
On His 450th Birthday: Imagining Shakespeare “Within the Consciousness of Our Country”
I think Americans will be fascinated to learn of our deep and early connection to the Bard, how he inspired presidents and incited mobs, and how vivid the legacy of…
Nights of Wonder: Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in Hollywood and Beyond
The reading of this play is like wandering in a grove by moonlight …. —William Hazlitt (1817) Hazlitt ends his short essay on A Midsummer Night’s Dream by suggesting that…
Shakespeare in America: A Tale of Two Stratfords on Paul Robeson’s Birthday
In his introduction to Shakespeare in America: An Anthology from the Revolution to Now (Library of America $29.95), James Shapiro writes of the “steady stream of American tourists” visiting the…
Pairings and Passings: It’s Never Too Late to Read Julian Moynahan (1925-2014)
I watched him work in the back house where his study was located, his silver hair framed by the window and I wished I had something interesting to tell him.…
Found by Robert Frost On the Poet’s Birthday, or Adventures in a Parked Car
Every time I pull into a parking lot, regardless of the season, I notice people just sitting in their cars, probably texting, or surfing the net, or talking on cell…
The Poe Perplex: A Homeless Poet Worth His Weight in Gold Haunts the Bryn Mawr-Wellesley Book Sale
Ten years ago, in the March 31, 2004 issue of Town Topics, I wrote my first column about the Bryn Mawr-Wellesley Book Sale (BM-W), “Billy Collins and the Homeless Poets…
