Latest

Desert Boot Heroes

May 19, 2020

by Chris Cotonou.  The desert boot nearly didn’t happen. Stage set: Burma in the 1950s. While Nathan Clark, of the Clark’s shoe family, is on military duty, he spots the notoriously rowdy ‘Desert R...

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WFH

May 08, 2020

by Alexander Freeling.   It wasn’t really the start, but it felt like one. As I write this, we’ve been officially confined to our homes in Britain for several weeks: confined not only by caution fo...

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RIP Jimmy Webb, 1957-2020

May 05, 2020

by Daniel Penny.   Jimmy Webb, denizen of St. Mark’s Place, punk guru, and rockstar couturier died last month. He was 62. An upstate runaway and downtown club kid since the ‘70s, Jimmy had gotten h...

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Coping Jawnz

April 28, 2020

by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans.  An essay topic, exploded like a soap bubble, both flimsy and eye-stinging: memories of a short story (by whom? sounds French) about a woman (a duchess? a marquise?) who...

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Bill Withers, 1938-2020

April 14, 2020

by Chris Cotonou.  Soul wasn’t just a music genre for Bill Withers, who sadly passed away recently, but an impulse – an expression, and a way to speak plainly about the tribulations (and successes)...

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Time Capsules

April 07, 2020

by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans.  We can find inspiration in everything, as Paul Smith wrote. During these times of sheltering in place, we may have to. The mind has limits, though. A colleague recommen...

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The Original Penny Loafer

March 31, 2020

by David Isle.  I’m sure you’ll remember the scene in Adam McKay’s masterwork Talladega Nights in which the dastardly (French) villain Jean Girard challenges our hero Ricky Bobby to name one thing ...

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From Inside the Velvet Mask

March 24, 2020

by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans.   We cannot outrun history’s arrow. d’Artagnan and his boon companions the Three Musketeers learned that over 5,000-odd pages of Alexandre Dumas’ rambling historical fic...

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