One can recall that time, seemingly eons ago, when Walter Cronkhite would calmly and directly report what had happened during the day. There were no histrionics, no inflammatory sound bites, no table pounding in those reports: just the news.

It’s always interesting to run into a word or phrase that’s novel. It’s the “what does that mean?” syndrome.

Sitting on the shoulder of Dickens’s title character were not angels and devils, but a talking raven, Grip. Throughout the book, it is Grip who delivers the punch lines, the insights, and the wisdom that somehow escape young Barnaby who is clearly not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Ah, February. The month of love. Flowers and candy and jewelry sales hoping to boost engagement proposals.

You may have noticed. The proliferation of so-called “celebrity biopics” continues both in a movie theater near you or, more conveniently, on a streaming service inviting your homebound blitzing evenings and weekends. When, a few years ago, Timothée Chalamet emerged as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, theaters were filled and song downloads of “Tangled Up in Blue” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” skyrocketed. The Nobel Prize-winning poet moved into the spotlight once again, decades after Robert Zimmerman emerged from Hibbing, MN, and became Bob Dylan.

JUNE RECIPE

There’s a wind coming off the Hudson. Frankly, it’s got a real bite to it. After all, it’s autumn in the tri-state area and along with leaves flaming into brilliant color, busloads of appreciative “leaf peepers” and end-of-season sales at local stores, it’s time to stand on the sidelines of a soccer game, a football […]