Archive for February, 2010
I don’t know about all of you, but I haven’t been able to break away from watching the live hearings being televised on C-SPAN as Alaska legislators debate the proposal to rename their state in honor of Sarah Palin. The debate, in case you haven’t been following this, isn’t over whether to change the state’s [...]
Filed under: Humor, Politics, Sarah Palin | 2 Comments
Tags: Alaska, Sarah Palin
Note: Traffic on this site soars whenever I mention Sarah Palin. So I’ve decided to write something about her at least once a week. Here’s this week’s Sarah Palin report: Faithful readers of “World of Wonders” know that I posted several entries in recent weeks about the Feb. 20 grand opening of friend Steven Hart’s [...]
Filed under: Book talk, books, Humor, New Jersey, Politics, Sarah Palin, writing | 1 Comment
Tags: Highland Park, Highland Park NJ, N.J., New Jersey bookstores, Nighthawk Books, Sarah Palin, Steven Hart
Nighthawk Books, that is, owned and operated by friend Steven Hart in Highland Park, N.J. The grand opening this Saturday will kick off with a book signing by Mary McAvoy, who will also read from her new novel “Love’s Compass.” Other literary and music events are planned through the day and evening. Here’s the store, [...]
Filed under: Book talk, books, Fiction, New Jersey, writing | Leave a Comment
Tags: Highland Park, Love's Compass, Mary McAvoy, N.J., New Jersey bookstores, Nighthawk Books, Steven Hart
Sarah rises to the occasion
Note: Traffic on this site soars whenever I mention Sarah Palin. So I’ve decided to write something about her at least once a week. Here’s this week’s Sarah Palin report: She’s been a mayor. She’s been a governor. She’s been a candidate for vice president. She may try to become the actual president. And she’s [...]
Filed under: Humor, Olympics, Politics, Sarah Palin | 3 Comments
Tags: figure skating, Sarah Palin, Winter Olympics
Sarah Palin to the rescue!
One of the highest-traffic days ever for “Nicholas DiGiovanni’s World of Wonders” was a day during the presidential campaign when I wrote a satirical piece suggesting that Sarah Palin’s presence on the GOP ticket as the vice-presidential candidate was actually the fulfillment of the Book of Revelation’s apocalyptic vision as described in the secret message [...]
Filed under: Humor, New Jersey, Politics, Religion, Sarah Palin, Weather | 3 Comments
Tags: New Jersey, New Jersey blizzard, New Jersey snow storm, New Jersey Turnpike, Sarah Palin, seventh seal, Tea Party
A night so cold, a heart so warm
He might be a character in a movie. Maybe someone who’s sitting in the shadows of a Tom Waits lyric or a Charles Bukowski poem, the lonely middle-aged guy who’s sitting alone at a booth in the back of the bar. And it’s nighttime, and there’s music playing on a jukebox, and the guy’s nursing [...]
Filed under: Bob Dylan, love, Music, Nature, New Jersey, Travels, Weather | Leave a Comment
Tags: "Visions of Johanna", blizzard, Charles Bukowski, love, New Jersey, New Jersey blizzard, New Jersey Turnpike, snow storm, Tom Waits
I’ve spent a lot of time in New England this winter, but somehow I’ve managed to avoid serious snow. Lately, though, snow’s been following me around. I just got back from two weeks in Virginia, at a writers/artists retreat in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and my popularity skyrocketed when a fluke snowstorm [...]
Filed under: Joni Mitchell, Lindisfarne, Music, Nature, New Jersey, Tom Rush, Travels, Weather | Leave a Comment
Tags: "Snowed In" by Albert Collins, "Urge for Going", "Winter Song" by Lindisfarne, Albert Collins, blizzard, Central New Jersey, Joni Mitchell, Lindisfarne, N.J. Turnpike, New England, New Jersey, snow, Tom Rush, VCCA, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Virignia snowstorm, winter songs
The view of the Blue Ridge Mountains was spectacular. The setting, high on a hilltop called Mount St. Angelo, set way off the highway connecting Lynchburg, Va., and Charlottesville, Va., was perfect, complete with a bluebird and cardinal who appeared outside my studio window every morning to flit and flutter in the first weekend’s snow, [...]
Filed under: Book talk, DiGiovanni, Fiction, literary blogs, Music, Travels, Web, writing | Leave a Comment
Tags: Blue Ridge Mountains, City of Gracious Living, half moon, J. Walter Hawke, Melora Griffis, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
The title of this blog post is also, believe it or not, the title of the longtime official state song of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The song was written by an African-American named James Bland back in the 1800s. And the lyrics go like this: Carry me back to old Virginny, There’s where the cotton [...]
Filed under: Politics, Travels, writing | 1 Comment
Tags: "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny", bigotry, Blue Ridge Mountains, James Bland, Jerry Falwell, Liberty University, prejudice, rural poverty, state songs, VCCA, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Virginia snow storm, Walton's Mountain Museum
