Congrats to Top, Strange, and Charm Quark

Laila Lalami has spoken for the 3Quarks Daily Literary Prize."The finalists for this year’s 3QD prize write in very different genres, but they were all very impressive, which made the task of choosing just three difficult indeed."She did not chose my musings on Alice. The winners offer an enormous...

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 Mapeel     3/28/2011     blogs   

The Shadow of Her Smile: Elizabeth Taylor

Every movie lover has some sort of relationship with Elizabeth Taylor, one of the screen's all-time greatest lovers. Her career spans the lifetime of the “between the wars” generation, born in the 1920s and 30s. They grew up with her, matching her age for age as she went from the girl in Lassie Come...

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 Mapeel     3/23/2011     Film   

Spring, Sprang, Sprung: The Jesuit asks "What is all this juice and this joy?"

The 2011 verbal* [sic] equinox was yesterday, March 20. “An equinox occurs twice a year, in March and September, when the center of the Sun crosses directly over the Earth's equator, as the Earth is tilted neither away nor toward the Sun.” The poets have honored this season with their best. I love...

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 Mapeel     3/21/2011     poetry   

The Lit/Crit St. Patrick

The Irish Arts Center of NYC has a novel way to celebrate the Irish on St. Patrick's Day, pun intended. They sent the word out last month that they were collecting books by and about the Irish to hand out on St. Patrick's Day by teams of volunteers at a specific location in each of the 5 boroughs....

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 Mapeel     3/17/2011     Ireland   

The Center Is Not Holding

The ceremony of innocence was long ago drowned, but Yeats was not imagining this much destruction, even as his beast slouched toward Bethlehem.First numbing thoughts were of the sheer force of the water: the speed and sickening ruthlessness with which it pushed and drowned everything and all in its...

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 Mapeel     3/15/2011     current events   

Speechless

The NY Times has a good round-up of ways to help relief efforts in Japan.This is the easiest AMERICAN RED CROSSRed Cross officials say donors can text REDCROSS to 90999 and a $10 donation will automatically be charged to donor’s phone bi...

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 Mapeel     3/12/2011     current events   

It's Mardi Gras (but not in NYC)

New York does not join the rest of the world in the celebration of Carnival. Why is that? Discuss. In truth, the excesses are more interesting in a world where Lent had some meaning, where an austerity of the 40 days following was palpable. Now it's a celebration of life that just blends into the all...

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 Mapeel     3/08/2011   

3 Quarks Daily: The Arts & Literature Prize. Vote for Me!

The other day I followed a tweet link from the uber-connected Maud Newton and ended up on the info page for the Quarks’s Arts & Literature prize. Can I say here how much Twitter can be like a box of Cracker Jacks? You never know where you are going to land when you click a link.I’ve visited the...

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 Mapeel     3/04/2011     blogs, literature