That it is Muhammad Ali’s 65th birthday today gives me the opportunity to acknowledge him as one person whom, despite his profession, I have to admire (and once ran into in a hole-in-the-wall Middle Eastern restaurant in Hyde Park, Chicago) and to post Freakwater’s song about him, entitled after one of his nicknames (after, of [...]

How’s this for a junket: The 2nd Annual Transdisciplinary Literary and Cultural Studies Conference in Istanbul. The theme is “Metamorphosis and Place” with one subtheme being war-related. So, thinking I could cook something up with the tranformation of landscape in postwar Okinawa I submitted a proposal and… it was accepted! The conference web site is [...]

(photo from www.thereasonwhy.org)
I think I heard a piece on NPR a while back about this new female phenom vocalist in the torch singer tradition, Rachael Yamagata. Wikipedia describes her as having a “dark, raspy alto.” Yum. Her myspace site is here. These are perhaps her three least torchy more poppy (but still raspy) songs from [...]