Marianne Baum: Written between 1939-1946 The Baum GRUPPE Act, do something, we told ourselves and each other. And so we did— our small group infiltrated factories, organized slave laborers, wrote pamphlets, dropped them on buses, slipped out at night with buckets of paint, brushes, left our mark. So little, but we had to do something….
No Respect for Ideas
Having had several ideas stolen from me without so much as a thank you when I was a younger writer I have been very careful about sending books, plays and ‘ideas’ out to anyone. And when I read what happened to other people’s ideas my experiences are mild. There are many people who suggest registering…
The Fire of Ice
Many years ago I was watching Richard Burton as a middle aged man talking about a new poem he had found by Robert Frost – one of only two poems of much worth he ever wrote in my opinion – which started ‘Some say the world will end in fire…’ and I remember as a…
Atheism and Divinity
I have listened for many years to debates between religious people and agnostics and/or atheists and heard many trying with earnest goodwill to persuade each of the merits of their own case. Some points may be considered absurdist (like defending exact phrases in the religious texts against experience) and some antagonistic (like labelling all religious…
Security on the Internet
I was told by some trained system operators when I began to surf the Internet that whatever you do, nothing is private on the net. Basically if someone wants to find you and knows how then they will be able to track you even if you make it difficult for them. However though this may…
The Art of Visiting
Am happy to report my friends have returned from Mumbai ans that all-in-all they had a lovely couple of weeks holiday. One of the highlights was going to a village in Matheran, an out of the way stop-over in the hills which has no roads and no electricity. It is probably something of a dream…
John Clare
All Nature has a Feeling All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks Are life eternal: and in silence they Speak happiness beyond the reach of books; There’s nothing mortal in them; their decay Is the green life of change; to pass away And come again in blooms revivified. Its birth was heaven, eternal it…
Technically Bankcrupt
If you, like me, have watched the paroxysms and ‘o’er vaulting’ the leaders of the world have been going through since the ‘banking crisis’ hit, from the outside you could be forgiven for wondering what exactly maintains this crisis. As countries slide down the scale of viability you could be forgiven for asking, just how…
Unbound Books
This recent concept (launched in May 2011) at the Hay Festival brings writers closer to readers by enabling readers to choose between suggested ideas for a book and to follow its progress even suggesting ideas for that book’s content as it grows. My friends think this is a brilliant idea that enables a greater number…
Upstairs or Downstairs
Many years ago they did a programme in the UK going through the day-to-day routine of an Edwardian kitchen and they had as their guide a lady who had been trained as a cook and worked for a family. At the end of the series they asked her what she would most want if she…