Recent content by Farace

Sometime in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s I was a freelance proofreader for Globe Pequot Press. One of the books I proofread was about culinary dishes named in honor of opera singers, such as Chicken Tettrazini, Peaches Melba and Melba Toast (I guess Nellie Melba rated quite highly to get more...

We have a Scottish pub here in my hometown, run by a true Glaswegian. Call him Irish and you’ll get an earful! My ex-wife’s first name is Leslie, but she never uses it. When she was a baby, she appeared in the newspaper in the arms of her father, who was also Leslie. The caption referred to...

I felt compelled by the article on the Foxhole Surgeon to search and try to find if he actually did go to medical school. https://encyclopedia.adventist.org/article?id=BJMJ https://mypulsenews.com/an-arkies-faith-the-foxhole-surgeon/ And there’s more out there.

I didn’t understand, back when he left Annie with his friends, why he didn’t leave any financial support. They lost their house and Annie had to find and arrange for alternate housing. If you were a millionaire and you were relying on friends to watch your ward while you were away, and you don’t...

I asked my partner, who lived in Rhode Island for forty years, about Melville, and she might have heard of it but couldn’t place it, so she looked it up. Not far from Newport, where she lived for several years, so she was even more surprised she wasn’t aware of it (though she figured out that...

Halfway through my high school years Carter took office, and I remember well how he pushed for the adoption of the metric system and the resistance he encountered. (It’s also amusing that in my sophomore year, we weren’t allowed to use those newfangled pocket calculators, but rather a slide...

We’ve coincidentally been binge-watching Peter Gunn for the past several weeks, amused that everyone seems to drive a Plymouth Fury. We’ve pondered what city the locale might be, with the occasional references to “across the river,” and the seemingly never-ending supply of cool jazz clubs (early...

Spellings of “Lichty” and “Litchy” have been alternating for several days now.

We felt the quake in Connecticut. I’m told there were reports all the way to the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border.

The first appearance of Vitamin Flintheart. I remember him from reading the comics when I was a kid in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Had no idea he’d been around that long.

An article in yesterday‘s Guardian suggests that the destruction of the monastery and death of civilians could have been avoided if the Vatican had taken action to enforce the neutral zone around it...

One thing is really bugging me about the Little Orphan Annie story line: Warbucks, millionaire industrialist, leaves his ward with an old friend, who is clearly barely scraping by. Doesn’t it make sense that he’d have left some financial assistance as well, and have some money regularly...

My partner, when she was in her 20s, lived in Newport, RI and used to encounter Ms. Duke from time to time when Duke “went out slumming,” in particular enjoying a club called Harpo’s, and sometimes exhibiting bawdy behavior. There were also rumors she was having affairs with her chauffeurs...

I have a memory of being two or three and having my mouth washed out with soap for saying “shit.” Very confusing, as all I had been doing was repeating something my dad said!

Of tangential interest, perhaps, the trolley museum at which I volunteer has in its collection the Mineola, August Belmont’s private subway car, which during his lifetime was stationed at his private subway stop under the Belmont Hotel. He had an arrangement with the Long Island Railroad that...