Posts Tagged ‘Lord Byron’
“It’s the stories, man; it’s the stories!”*…
Readers who are readers will be delighted to discover (if they haven’t already) Narrative Magazine, a wonderful web-based literary review (though there is also a thrice-yearly hard copy edition). Featuring fiction from the likes of Ann Beattie, Richard Bausch, James Salter, Elizabeth Benedict, and Amy Bloom, essays from folks like Gail Godwin, Larry McMurtry, and Rick Bass, it also showcases poetry and your correspondent’s special weakness: cartoons like the one above (use the pull-down on the page at the other end of that link to see other galleries).
The love-child of two Bay Area literati, Narrative is a 501-c3 devoted to Letters. It’s worthy of readers’ attention– and, dare your correspondent suggest, of their support.
* Jazz giant Charlie Parker would hang around a jukebox at one of the clubs he frequented, putting his coins in to play country-western songs. When friends finally asked him, “Why do you listen to that stuff?,” he reportedly replied, “It’s the stories, man, it’s the stories!” (source)… not altogether apropos, your correspondent confesses; but it is an awesome anecdote…
As we luxuriate in good literature, we might recall that it was on this date in 1812, just before he published the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, that George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron– aka Lord Byron– made his first speech in the House of Lords… as it happens, a defense of Luddite violence against Industrialism in his home county of Nottinghamshire.
Byron in 1813, in Albanian dress, as painted by Thomas Phillips
Advances in Materials Science, Volume Eight(-ball in the side pocket)…
The folks at Nottage Design have built a pool table using a glass bed with a surface of a new material, Vitrik, which is transparent, but has the rolling characteristics of the traditional pool table surface, felt.
And, while it costs just under $40,000 (AUS), that includes a nifty accessory kit (silver cues and bridge stick, balls, racking triangle, etc.) and delivery… in Australia.
One can download the brochure here.
As we consider our caroms, we might recall that it was on this date in 1810 the George Gordon, Lord Byron, swam the Hellespont (the four-mile strait in Turkey now called the Dardanelles). Byron, 22 at the time and on an extended Grand Tour, was emulating the (legendary) Greek hero Leander, who supposedly swam the same stretch…
And continuing on the theme of athletic accomplishment, we might recall that it was on this date, exactly 170 years later, that in 1980, the great Willie McCovey hit his 521st (and final) major league home run– one year to the day after Bobby Bonds followed Willie Mays to become became the second member of the 300-300 Club (300 home runs, 300 stolen bases). Bobby’s son Barry became the 4th member of the 300-300 Club in 1995 (Andre Dawson “joined” in 1991); then Barry became the only member of the 400-400 Club in 1998, and then the only member of the 500-500 Club (in 2003)… Willie Mays remains the only member of the 300-300-3000 Club: 300 home runs, 300 stolen bases, and 3,000 hits.
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